Tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents will soon receive new driver licenses and IDs in the mail because the cards they were issued weren’t printed properly, officials said Friday.
Jacquelyn Goddard, a spokeswoman for MassDOT, said more than 50,000 residents received licenses and ID cards that need to be replaced. The cards are valid but lack a certain fraud prevention feature, she said.
IDEMIA, the company that prints licenses and ID cards for the Registry of Motor Vehicles, said starting June 6, replacement cards will be mailed to those “individuals who received one of the cards with an anomaly.”
The company said they notified the Massachusetts RMV about the problem on May 25, after discovering “an anomaly with a single printer” which resulted in the need to replace 53,680 driver licenses and identification cards.
“Those who receive replacement cards are being instructed to destroy their old card,” the company said in a statement. “No other action is required. There are no impacts to any license holder’s driving record.”
“We discovered it,” Christopher Doherty, a spokesman for IDEMIA, said in a phone interview. “It was a quality control thing.”
IDEMIA, which is headquartered in Virginia and has an office Bedford, prints driver licenses and ID cards for 36 states, he said.
Emily Sweeney can be reached at emily.sweeney@globe.com. Follow her @emilysweeney and on Instagram @emilysweeney22.