He couldn't find documents for the sale of the vehicle, but has a record showing he bought a replacement vehicle on the same day.
The fees included fines for not having a registration of Warrant of Fitness, as well as court fees and overdue fees, and were issued in Palmerston North - somewhere he does not believe he ever took the vehicle when he owned it.
Previous correspondence about the infringements had been sent to a PO Box address in Bulls, which Urquhart's company has never had an address in.
"You can imagine it was somewhat of a surprise to me," he said.
Urquhart sent off a form objecting to the fines and informing the ministry he had sold the car in 2009, but received a reply stating he was the registered owner of the vehicle and therefore had to pay the fines.
He was also informed the ministry has the right to seize assets in order to collect the cost of the fines.
"What I'm going to do from here, I really don't know?," he said.
He is unsure who the onus was on in 2009 to ensure the change of ownership was carried out, but believed given he was selling it to a licenced operator everything would be handled correctly.
He said the whole situation was "just bizarre", and questioned how the ministry new how to contact him in 2020, but not in 2012 when the first infringement was issued.
"It's sat there and nobody's done anything about it."
It was "just absurd" for the ministry to start chasing him for the money eight or nine years later, with no prior contact about the fines, he said.
The Ministry of Justice would not comment on Urquhart's case, as the collections unit was part of the district court.
But group manager of national service delivery Brett Dooley said in a statement a failure to update ownership of a vehicle was insufficient to challenge a fine.
"Fines do not expire, so it remains the court's duty to follow them up where possible. The court is not running a campaign to track down payment for historic infringement fines. While the court makes efforts to contact individuals with outstanding fines in a timely manner, this is not always possible, particularly in cases where the court has received outdated contact details for the individual.
"When a vehicle is sold it is the responsibility of the seller to ensure that the registered ownership is changed with the New Zealand Transport Agency."
If a fine remained unpaid, the court could take enforcement action to collect them, he said.
"If a recipient believes the fines are incorrectly issued to them or that they have not received notification of them they are able to apply to dispute this.
"However, if the court declines this application, they must still pay the original fine or face enforcement action. In a situation where ownership of a vehicle has not been updated, this will not be sufficient to challenge the fine."
Another Auckland motorist was left stunned recently when the ministry informed him he was overdue to pay a $40 parking fine from 11 years ago.
Kevin Longley told the Herald he had no idea he had an unpaid parking ticket until he received a "threatening" court letter and subsequently phoned the Ministry of Justice helpline.
"It's money-making at the expense of common sense," he said.
"I'm laughing at them because how desperate do these bureaucratic money grubbers have to be?"
In 2017 the Wellington City Council confirmed its oldest unpaid parking ticket was a $40 infringement for parking in a loading zone, issued in 1987.
That ticket was handed over to the Ministry of Justice to chase up collection shortly after, but had not been pursued three decades later.
