Fender Tag help

This is kind of a sore point for me: The guy I bought my Demon from took the poor thing to Maaco or some other cut-rate paint place before he put it up for sale, just so it wouldn't be bare metal. Aside from crazy amounts of overspray on the windows, they also painted over the fender tag. The very, very rusty fender tag. As well as the screws that held it on. So I'm left with a fender tag that I can't read and can't remove for fear that the paint is all that's holding it together right now. Does anyone know of any ways to *gently* remove the paint without letting the rust fall to pieces? I highly doubt I'd be able to get a new fender tag made using data from the VIN?