PITTSBURGH — Over the holidays, more than five million drivers will use Pennsylvania Turnpike, and some will likely receive a text message telling them they owe turnpike fees. While it may look legit, it’s a scam.
“They went from sending it to me to now sending it to me grandmother, so now I’m like okay let me check this out,” said Aria King.
King is a small business owner, and while she says she doesn’t do a lot of traveling, she began receiving this text message from a Canadian area code: “438.” The message even included a Pennsylvania Turnpike icon and suggested that she use the link provided in the message to avoid an additional $35 fee.
The amount the scammers said she owed was $291.
“They’re not incredible amounts, they are amounts to where you sort of think maybe I do [owe],” King said.
Unsure if the text message was real or not, she began to do some digging.
“When I went on to the PA Turnpike website the first thing that popped up was there is a scam out there,” she explained.
According to the PA Turnpike Commission bills are only sent via the mail. They always include either your E-Z pass account information or your plate number. FBI Special Agent in Charge Kevin Rojek has been cracking down on these types of scams and told us the goal of this smishing scam is to steal your info.
“It’s not only that initial financial hit that you may take from that initial scam but then the bad actors now have information that they can exploit further,” Rojek said.
Last year, the Internet Crime Complaint Center that the FBI runs collected more than 800,000 complaints for a total loss of more than $12 billion. Money that Rojek told said is often never recovered.
“The banks only have 72 hours to recover any funds, the actors understand this as well so they will generally do things on Fridays so then it’s not noticed,” he explained.
As for Aria, she told us she is grateful she nor her grandmother submitted the payment to the fake account, but said she can’t help but feel bad for those who did.
“291 dollars may not seem like a lot to me but to someone else, that’s a car payment, a utility bill, that might be all they have,” she said.
For more information about the PA Turnpike scam or to file a complaint, click here.
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