New scam: pay your bill for using toll road

By Diane Hettrick

Here's an opportunistic scammer, taking advantage of WSDOT's billing mess-up with the Good to Go passes. (see King5 article)

This appeared in my In Box:

Notice to Appear,

You have a unpaid bill for using toll road.

You are kindly asked to service your debt in the shortest time possible.

The copy of the invoice is attached to this email.

Regards,

Arthur Morton,

E-ZPass Manager.

Since we don't have toll roads in the north end, this one was easy to spot as fraud. If you read the message without the panic it is meant to induce, you can see that the language is stilted. Often there are grammatical errors. There is a complete lack of specific information - what road, what car, what day. what bill?

In addition, the email address of the sender is a string of numbers, instead of a recognized government agency.

The scammers are counting on an immediate reaction, preferably one that leaves them with your credit card information.