Scam Alert: Authorities Alarmed by Surge in Fake Traffic Violation Texts

On a Friday morning in early May, about 200 people arrived at the Denver County Courthouse, anxious about a text they’d each received the day before: an urgent alert claiming that they needed to report to the courthouse for a hearing the next morning because they had unpaid tolls or parking or speeding violations.

The text said they could either pay a small fine by scanning a QR code or show up for the court hearing.

“We don’t know how many people scanned the QR code,” says Carolyn Tyler, public information officer at the Denver County Court, but it was likely far more than the number of recipients who showed up that morning.

Many who came for their supposed hearings were Spanish speakers, concerned that they were in legal trouble.

“It’s a pretty threatening text to receive,” Tyler says.

It’s also a pretty convincing elaboration on the toll-collection scam texts that surged last year. Americans have been flooded with these messages from criminals pretending to be electronic toll-collection systems, intending to steal data and money.

Other fraud watchers are sounding the alarm: The Better Business Bureau sent out a consumer alert, warning that “a new text message phishing scam is circulating, hot on the heels of the recent toll collection scams that targeted drivers.” The Federal Trade Commission released a similar alert in April, noting that the agency had “seen a spike in reports about this text scam in the last month.”

What the traffic violation scam looks like

Recipients receive official-looking text messages from criminals posing as toll agencies, motor vehicle departments or courts.

The message claims you owe a small fee for a toll, parking or traffic violation and, as in Denver, might say you need to show up in court the next day if you refuse to pay. Artificial intelligence tools allow criminals to easily replicate legitimate traffic violation notices and incorporate images of official-looking state seals.

Sometimes a fake case number is used, but the notices often look unusually generic, officials report. “They keep things very vague but detailed enough where they include things like statute numbers,” says Deputy Jake Navarro, public affairs specialist with the Bay County, Florida, sheriff’s office. The office warned the public in April that a scam message was circulating in the area about unpaid tolls or traffic violations, titled “Final Notice — Court Enforcement Action.”

Many of these texts include links or QR codes. If you click the link or scan the code, you might be directed to a payment page that steals your personal information, such as credit card numbers, passwords or other personal data. Tyler says Denver court officials believe that when recipients scan the QR code included in the recent texts that drew people to the courthouse, criminals gain access to their contact lists, and the scam then spreads to them.

The National Center for State Courts received reports of texts nearly identical to those in Colorado that surfaced simultaneously in eight other states: Arizona, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, Oregon, South Dakota and Virginia.