'9 Hours Behind Bars': Amy Robach Recalls Spending a Night in Jail After Using a Fake ID

Amy Robach is opening up about her experience doing jail time.

While speaking on the latest episode of the Amy and T.J. podcast, the former GMA3: What You Need to Know co-anchor, 51, recalled the time she was put behind bars after using a fake I.D. at age 20.

“It was right before my junior year in college … I was gonna be 21 in February. Very important detail,” Robach told her partner and co-host T.J. Holmes. “And I had not gotten a car … my parents and I negotiated that I was gonna finally going to get my first car and … and my dad insisted that I get a stick shift.”

Robach explained that on the second night of having her car, she drove to a party and later left without her girlfriends as they continued hanging out with guys there. 

“I had two, three beers early in the night. Now it's like 2 o'clock in the morning. I had stopped drinking for several hours,” she continued. “... I decided to drive home by myself in my stick shift car … It was about less than a mile. But as you can might imagine, it might have looked like I was intoxicated. Because I was driving a stick shift for the second day of my life, and it was jerky.”

Robach then said during the drive back that she got "pulled over in the parking lot of my apartment complex” by a cop and she was asked her to take a sobriety test.

“I told the police officer that I was 21,” Robach recalled. “I told him I didn't have my driver's license on me because the driver's license I had was fake and I didn't want him to see the fake I.D. So he said he would let me go if I could prove that I lived in the apar -

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tment complex. So, I opened up my wallet to show him my apartment, and he saw my I.D.”

“He looked at it, and he obviously knew. And he said, 'I'm gonna take this with me,' ” she recounted.

Robach said two weeks later, after returning home from a dentist appointment at her parent’s house in Georgia, she was met by a sheriff’s deputy standing in her apartment driveway who arrested her and put her in jail.

“Bottom line…  I think they didn't have enough arrests,” she explained. “You know, they have these quotas… and they went back and looked at all the police reports and thought, we can arrest her for tampering a government I.D. and minor in possession because I admitted to the police officer that I had two beers earlier in the night.”

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“They actually put me in jail in Gwinnett County and then Athens Clarke County to prove that they had a quota issue and decided to extradite me,” Robach continued. “I got handcuffed and shackled, put into the back of a police car and then put into another holding cell.” 

“I spent nine hours behind bars before my mom was able to actually bail me out. I got credit for time served. Upon sentencing, I pleaded nolo no contest,” Robach added, “I don't have a conviction, but I do have an arrest record. There's the long story and a very important lesson learned.”

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