Drivers: Keep an Eye Out for New Toll Road Scams

Criminals pretend to be highway officials requesting payment after your trip

Ken Budd,

AARP

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En español

Published July 05, 2024

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Taking a road trip this summer? Gas prices and traffic jams aren’t your only concern. Cybercriminals are now asking drivers to pay fake highway tolls.

The scam began gathering steam in early March, according to the FBI, and it appears to be growing more prevalent.

How the road toll scam works

People receive a text message, which appears to be from a highway authority or a transponder company like E-ZPass, notifying them of supposedly unpaid tolls. The amounts are usually small: Some of the texts have used figures like $11.69 or $12.51. You need to pay the toll, the scammers say, to avoid a late fee of $50. The text includes a link for payment.

Instead of sending the same text everywhere, scammers are often tailoring them to specific states, the FBI has warned. The link in the text “is created to impersonate the state’s toll service name, and phone numbers appear to change between states,” the FBI notes. So if you live in Pennsylvania, the website link might be something like https://myturnpiketollservices.com (a URL that scammers have included in some of their texts). The criminals may even be targeting people who recently traveled. The Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit focused on minimizing the risk of identity compromise and crime, is receiving calls from people who visited, say, North Carolina, and then received a text supposedly from that state, says Eva Velasquez, the nonprofit’s president and CEO.

For victims, it’s a triple whammy. Not only are they paying money that they don’t owe, but the link may expose them to malware and identity theft, and criminals get access to the victim’s credit card number.

Authorities’ warnings

In April, the FBI reported in a public service announcement that it had received more than 2,000 complaints about fraudulent toll texts. Agencies such as the New Jersey Turnpike Authority and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, as well as the Better Business Bureau and the North Carolina attorney general’s office, issued alerts that same month. By May, the Identity Theft Resource Center released a warning after receiving complaints from people in 12 states, from Virginia to Texas to California. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation issued an alert about road toll scams in June.

“I think this is going to get a lot more momentum,” Velasquez says. “For those of us who have been in this space for a long time, when we started hearing about it, our Spidey senses were tingling. We thought, This could be bad.”

Another troublesome twist: The unpaid toll amounts are small enough to seem reasonable — and believable.

“Some people think, ‘It’s such a small amount — I should go ahead and pay it so I don’t have to pay the extra $50,’” says Melanie McGovern, director of public relations and social media for the International Association of Better Business Bureaus.

Some aspects of the fraud are not sophisticated, however. Despite tailoring the text messages for specific states, the scammers appear to be casting a wide net, which can lead to mistakes. Michigan residents, for example, have received texts even though Michigan doesn’t have toll roads. McGovern’s husband received a text purportedly from SunPass, a Florida transponder system.

“We don’t live in Florida and we don’t have vehicles there,” she says.

How to avoid the road toll scam

Understand the scam. This type of scam is what fraud experts call “smishing.” It’s the same as phishing, but using text messages instead of emails. In both cases, the goal is the same: to entice you to click a link or open a document that might download malware or allow criminals to access your personal information, credit card info or bank accounts.

Don’t click on the link. Never open a link in an email or text, especially if the message arrives unannounced. “If you didn’t initiate the communication, don’t engage directly,” Velasquez says. McGovern’s advice: “If you get this kind of text message, delete it.”

Go to the source. Instead of opening the link, contact the entity that supposedly sent it. If you received a text that appears to be from E-ZPass, for example, and you think the toll could be legit, go to its website or call its customer service line to confirm if the charge is real.

Watch for emails. Scammers aren’t just using texts. In New York, E-ZPass holders have received emails asking them to download an invoice for unpaid tolls, according to an alert from the New York State Thruway Authority.

Report the scam. If you receive one of these texts, report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, IC3.gov. You can also report the scam to the Better Business Bureau or your state’s attorney general’s office.

Listen to this episode of AARP's The Perfect Scam for more information on road toll scams.

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Ken Budd has written for National Geographic Traveler, Travel+Leisure, The Washington Post Magazine and many more. He is the author of a memoir, The Voluntourist.