Scam E-ZPass texts annoying many across Twin Cities

GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — If you’ve gotten a text saying you owe money for unpaid and outstanding tolls from EZ-Pass, you aren’t alone. If you haven’t, consider yourself lucky.

“It’s frustrating,” Bryce Austin, CEO of TCE Strategy and a cyber security expert, said.

Those texts come from numbers outside of the United States and are complete scams.

“Because we’re entering the travel season, so the thought that people are going to get messages about an unpaid toll or what have you, make more sense when we’re all gearing up to go on summer road trips,” Austin said.

Austin says scammers are able to send so many texts because it costs next to nothing to send them.

“They are sending it to every single 612, 763 and 952 phone number, knowing a good percentage are cell phones that can receive text messages,” he said. “The ones that aren’t are just a throw away.”

Many of the texts that KARE 11 employees have received are from a +63 country code – that’s the code for the Philippines. Austin says he doubts those texts are actually coming from there, as they likely are fake numbers, too.

“They’re sending these out in such giant masses that they aren’t even taking the time to spoof a 612, 763 or 952 area code,” Austin said. “They’re just being lazy.”

Austin says the simple thing to do is to just delete the text, and never click on the link they send you. That link could steal your information, money or both.

“The trouble is, it is the World Wide Web. It is not the Minnesota web,” he said. “So we have people from anywhere on the planet trying to scam us, and they’ll take advantage of Minnesota nice if we let them.”

MnDOT says it and E-ZPass never send texts for payment, and says these texts are being sent nationwide and have been for more than a year now.

The department has ways to report those fake texts on their website.