Unpaid Toll Scam Texts: How to Spot Them and Check What You Really Owe

What an unpaid toll scam text looks like

An unpaid toll scam text claims you owe a small amount for a road, bridge, or express lane, threatens a late fee if you do not pay right away, and gives you a link to a payment page. The page is fake, and the goal is your card number and personal details.

The names in these texts belong to real toll programs such as E-ZPass, SunPass, FasTrak, TxTag, and I-PASS. Those agencies are not sending the messages. Criminals borrow their names because millions of drivers use them, and the agencies themselves have been warning their customers about it. The Federal Communications Commission’s guide to toll road payment scam texts describes messages that claim you have an unpaid toll or a balance that will lead to account suspension, with a link that looks official and leads to a site built to collect your information.

Here is a message we wrote to show the pattern. The agency name is invented on purpose.

The FTC’s alert Got a text about unpaid tolls? It’s probably a scam says the same: the text shows a dollar amount, links to a page that asks for your bank or card information, and can also be used to collect details like your driver’s license number.

Why so many people get these texts, even without driving on a toll road

These texts are sent in bulk to huge lists of phone numbers, so they reach people who have never used a toll road, people who do not own a car, and people who drove through a toll plaza last week. The last group is the one the message is written for.

Cashless tolling makes the story easy to believe. The FCC notes that cash-free toll lanes keep spreading and that a driver in a new area, covered by a different toll operator, may not be sure a toll was paid. A text about a missed toll fits that doubt exactly.

The size of the problem shows up in federal data. In its 2024 annual report, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center counted 59,271 complaints about toll scams, with $129,624 in reported losses. The loss figure is small compared with the number of complaints, and that fits what the FTC found: in its Data Spotlight on the top text scams of 2024, it lists unpaid toll notices among the five most reported text scams and says these scammers are really after credit card and even Social Security numbers. The few dollars of the fake toll are only the way in. The card number typed on the fake page is what gets used afterward.

The same FTC report says people reported $470 million in losses to scams that started with a text in 2024, more than five times the 2020 figure. Most fraud is never reported, so the real number is higher.

Do real toll agencies ever send text messages?

Some do, and that is part of what makes the scam work. What the real texts have in common is that they do not ask you to pay through a link in the message. Each agency sets its own rules, so the table below shows what several of them say on their official pages.

Two things follow from the table. A text can come from a real agency and still be something you check in your account rather than in the message. And if you never signed up for text alerts, a toll text addressed to you did not come from your toll agency.

Bills for drivers without a transponder usually arrive by mail. New York’s Thruway Authority, for example, says a toll bill is sent to the vehicle’s registered owner using DMV records, 30 to 45 days after the trip. That is a very different rhythm from a text that gives you until midnight.

How to check what you really owe

To find out whether you owe a toll, go to the toll agency on your own, by typing its address or opening its official app, and look at your account or search by your license plate. Leave the text closed while you do this. The FBI’s public service announcement on toll smishing gives the same advice: check your account on the toll service’s legitimate website, or call its real customer service number.

If you have a transponder account

Open the account the way you normally do, from a bookmark, the app you already use, or the address printed on your statement. The balance, the trips, and any violation are there. If the account shows nothing unpaid, the text was fake.

If you drove without a transponder

Find the agency that runs the road you drove on. Your state’s department of transportation lists the toll operators in the state, and a .gov site is a safer starting point than a search ad. Most pay-by-mail systems let you look up a bill by plate number on their official site. If there is a real bill, it will be there, and it will also reach you by mail at the address on your registration.

If you were driving a rental car

Ask the rental company how it handled tolls on your trip, using the contact details in your rental agreement. The text is not the place to find out.

If the text names a state you have not visited

The FCC’s advice for a text about a toll company in another state is to look up that company’s customer service number yourself and call before sending money or information. In practice, a toll in a state you never drove through is not something you owe.

For any link you are unsure about, our guide on how to check whether a link is safe shows how to read an address before opening it. With toll texts, though, the simplest path is not to open it at all, since you can reach the real account without it.

Why the text asks you to reply Y

Some toll texts arrive with a link that cannot be tapped and ask you to reply Y, or to reply and reopen the message, to activate it. Do not reply. A reply tells the sender that a real person reads messages on that number.

New York’s warning about E-ZPass text scams describes fake texts that are often sent from an international number and ask you to reply Y to receive a link. The FCC’s guide says not to reply at all, including pressing a button or answering Y or N.

The FTC explains that even a reply that goes nowhere confirms a working phone number, which can bring more scam calls and texts. The same logic applies to replying STOP, which the FBI also recommends against for texts from unknown senders.

What to do if you already paid or entered your details

If you typed a card number into the page, call your card issuer first, using the number on the back of the card. The sooner the bank knows, the sooner it can block the card and look at the charge.

1. Call the card issuer or bank now. Say you entered the card on a fake toll payment site. Ask them to cancel the card, send a new one, and review the charge. The FTC’s page on what to do if you were scammed explains how to ask for your money back for each payment method.
2. Watch the account for the next weeks. A small toll charge is often followed by other charges once the card number is known.
3. If you entered a password that you also use elsewhere, change it on every account that shares it, and turn on two-step verification where you can.
4. If you gave your driver’s license number or Social Security number, go to IdentityTheft.gov, the FTC’s site that builds a recovery plan step by step.
5. Check your real toll account by typing the agency’s address, to make sure nothing there changed.
6. Report the text to the FBI at ic3.gov, including the phone number that sent it and the website in the message, as the FBI asks.

Getting the money back depends on the bank, the payment method, and how quickly you report. It is not guaranteed, which is why the call to the bank comes first. Our guide on how to report a scam and try to recover your money shows where each report goes and what each agency can do with it.

If you only opened the page and typed nothing, close it. The details you did not enter are not in their hands.

The same pattern in delivery, DMV, and ticket texts

The toll text is one version of a larger pattern: a small, believable debt, a short deadline, and a link to a copied payment page. The same structure shows up in messages about packages, traffic tickets, and motor vehicle fees.

In the FTC’s list of the top text scams of 2024, fake package delivery problems came first, with people reporting a small redelivery fee that turned out to be a way to get their card number. We cover that version in package delivery scams. The FTC has also warned about texts claiming to be from your state’s DMV about an overdue traffic ticket, and Massachusetts says scam texts have used phrases like a formal final demand for payment and cited a false regulation about license suspension.

The check is the same in all of them. Find the organization on your own, open your account or call the number from a bill you already have, and see whether the debt exists there. For the general shape of these messages, see what smishing is, and for the version that imitates a bank, see fake bank text messages.

How to report and block a toll scam text

Forward the text to 7726, report it as junk in your messaging app, then delete it and block the number. Reporting takes a minute and helps others receive fewer of these messages.

• 7726 (SPAM): forwarding the message helps your wireless provider spot and block similar texts, according to the FTC.
• Report junk: both Apple Messages and Google Messages have a report option for unwanted texts.
• The FTC: file at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, especially if you paid or entered information.
• The FBI: file at ic3.gov with the sending number and the web address in the text.
• The toll agency: the FCC suggests telling your toll company about the scam text once you have confirmed your account is in order.

Blocking one number will not stop the next text, because these messages come from many numbers. What protects you is the habit of checking the account on your own each time, which works no matter which number sends the next one.

Toll scam text FAQ