Spin Control: Got a text saying you have an unpaid toll? It’s a scam

If your cellphone has pinged recently with a text claiming to be from a state agency saying you owe money on an unpaid toll, you’re not alone.

Texts claiming to be a final notice from the Washington State Department of Transportation that threaten legal action or penalties if you don’t pay in the next day or so are popping up on thousands of cellphones, not just in Washington but across the country.

Don’t wrack your brain trying to remember when you might have inadvertently driven on a toll road or bridge without paying. Definitely don’t click on any link that’s in the text.

Delete the text, and if your phone’s text system has the ability to do so with the same click, report them as junk or a scam.

They are as fake as they are ubiquitous.

“This actually is a thing that’s happening nationally,” said Lauren McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the department. “I think if you have a cellphone, you’ve gotten at least one of them.”

The department’s call center, which handles complaints and inquiries about all types of transportation issues, usually gets about 2,000 calls a week. Right now, it’s getting about 10,000, with most of the increase about the texts.

Some callers have said they clicked on the link to pay the toll they allegedly owed, but it wasn’t working properly. They wanted to know what they should do. The answer: Call your bank, stop payment and change passwords.

People with suspicious minds might notice the texts usually come from a number with lots of digits often with a plus sign in front of it. That plus means the phone that sent the text is in a foreign country.

Earlier this week, phones in my home got fake toll texts from phones in the United Kingdom (country code of +44). Minutes before sitting down to write this, my wife’s phone pinged with a fake toll text from country code +63, the Philippines. Other digits in the string indicate they are cellphones.

Although some private companies have offshored some of their clerical activities to cut costs, the department is not farming out its collection actions to dudes with burner phones in other countries, no matter what shape the state’s budget may be in.

“They come from all over,” McLaughlin said, adding the department also has reports of the texts coming from numbers in Canada and Russia. Now some texts are coming in with a fake email address rather than a phone number, she added.

A version of the toll texts began showing up last April. They pretty much had a message not much more complicated than “You owe tolls, send money.” They’ve become more sophisticated over the ensuing months, and have mentioned transportation departments in California, Michigan and Georgia, as well as Washington.

The texts that mention WSDOT also usually mention “Good to Go,” the electronic reading and payment system for toll roads and bridges in Western Washington. But while the department might text a participating driver a reminder if their account is running low, they would not text a demand for payment.

Drivers who don’t have Good to Go stickers and drive through a toll zone without paying can get a notice from the private company that runs the system. But it’s an official-sounding letter, with license plate number, time, date and place of the supposed infraction. It’s sent to the address connected with the license plate that’s read by the scanner. Not a text. Not an email.

Inland Northwest residents might be immediately suspicious because there aren’t any toll roads or bridges in Eastern Washington. The Spokane area’s sole then-toll bridge, the Maple Street Bridge, had its toll removed in 1990.

There aren’t any toll roads or bridges in Idaho, either. But that doesn’t keep the scammers from sending texts to the 208 area code. Scammers apparently cast a wide net and don’t base their targets on driver’s license or auto registration data.

Idaho resident Jason Mercier, of the Mountain States Policy Center, said his 13-year-old daughter, who obviously isn’t eligible to drive, got one last week.

“She immediately knew it was a scam and blocked it,” Mercier said.

He recently received one that even mentioned a Western Washington toll road he supposedly had been on. Except he knew he hadn’t, because he hasn’t been in Western Washington for months.

The Idaho Department of Transportation last week issued a news release warning residents to beware of the toll texts. Like Washington, the Idaho department noted it does not send notices by text demanding money.

The scams show no sign of slowing down. While I was writing this column, another fake toll text pinged, this time from a U.S. number with a Michigan area code. It had the same text as the others, however, so no points for American ingenuity.

Recently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned of texts referring to Georgia’s electronic tolling system, the Peach Pass. In a news release, the agency said it had received 1,573 complaints about fake toll texts in the first two weeks of March. That’s compared to 1,740 texts total from January 2024 through this February.

The FBI said people who want to report the texts can file a complaint with its Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.IC3.gov.

Such scams are called “smishing,” which is a combination of SMS (for short messaging service, another name for texts) and “phishing,” which is a type of cyberattack. It is a sign of the times that as technology advances, we have new scams that require weird new names.

Another common smish involves a text advising you that the Postal Service, UPS or some other delivery service has a package at their warehouse that they can’t deliver because of a problem with the address or ZIP code. Shortly before the latest toll text pinged on my wife’s phone, one of those came in, too.

People who order lots of items from online retailers might be tempted to think they’ve lost track of a delivery. But DON’T click on that link, and don’t call a phone number on the text. Instead, check the retailer’s site, which will usually have a list of your purchases and a way to track the delivery.

Most people who have had an email address since the early days of the internet can remember receiving a message from someone offering to cut them in on a fortune if they could help with a small legal or processing problem. One of the earliest manifestations involved a person claiming to be a Nigerian prince whose father had died and left him a fortune in oil or jewels or gold that he needed help freeing from the red tape of a government or a bank. For a little cash, he’d share half of it with you.

They were so common in the early days of emailing that this particular phishing, technically known as an advance-fee scam, became known as the Nigerian prince scam. For most people, they were easy to spot and easy to delete with the click of a mouse. But at least the story showed a bit of ingenuity – even creativity – even if the spelling and grammar was often atrocious.

This latest flood of toll text scams makes me long for a missive from the Nigerian prince.