I recall a similar story involving amateur radio. By ITU convention, amateur callsigns are [prefix][digit][suffix], like W1AW.
So one night, a new ham is operating his friend's fancier station, which has the HF equipment to talk clear around the world. And they make contact with another ham identifying himself as JY1. No suffix. Well that's weird, so they look it up, the JY prefix is Jordan, okay. So the guy on the mic just asks, "why doesn't your callsign have any letters after the digit?" and the reply comes back with a chuckle, "Oh, because I am the King."
That was the late King Hussein. about whom much has been written. I don't know if his call ever caused trouble with software validators, but I'd certainly believe it.