Scam alert - oh snap! Now I can lose thousands if someone copies my car’s license plate???

[as seen on tv]

Photo above - Outgoing mayor Eric Adams poses with one of his 3-star generals running the NYC police force, to tell the press he has no solution to fake license plates running red lights in the city.

I should have seen this coming. Or at least EZ Pass and all the companies selling red light cams to greedy towns should have. We now have an epidemic of license plate “cloning” (see link below).

It’s described as identity theft, but in reality, license plate cloning is much simpler and easier to pull off. Just take a stroll throughany shopping mall parking lot, and nap pictures of cars' license plate. Print them out at home. You can get weatherproof-adhesive paper from dozens of sellers on Amazon. Affix the stickers over your own plates. You’re good to go, good buddy!

Apparently CDL drivers and commuters fed up with $25 bridge tolls are in the vanguard here. One driver received a bill for $600 in toll booth charges as his first hint that his license had been cloned.

Time was, companies like EZ Pass would supply commuters with an RFID device the size of a deck of cards. Stick it to your windshield, and tolls are deducted against your account. Then some brainiac at EZ pass – and the states which gave them exclusive toll contracts – figured out how to save $20 per customer. Simply dispense with the RFID thingie completely, and bill direct from the license plate. This “no RFID box needed” change was wildly popular in places like Florida, where an afternoon in the summer sun will invariably make the glue melt, and the box will plunk down to your dashboard.

As annoying as getting a fraud $600 a month toll booth bill is, just wait until there are arrest warrants out for you. Going 120 mph in a 65 zone. Surveillance video of your car involved in drug transactions in “the bad part of town”. Vehicular homicide.

This is going to get worse before it gets better. And it’s just a preview of what’s coming next – cloned drivers permits, because the DMB got hacked. You could be pulled over and arrested for outstanding DUI warrants the next time some 17 year with a laptop breaks into a DMV computer system built in 1995 and run by a systems administrator with an online degree.

I’m just sayin’ . . .



Drivers Hit With Toll Bills for Trips They Never Took as License Plate Cloning Spreads Nationwide

 

[John T]

Toll roads and red light cams should be illegal for a number of reasons.

I think that creates a demand for this kind of theft.

 

[PNWest]

Gee whiz.... I guess it's no longer safe to leave the house. Imagine people might actually create fake license plates and fake driver's permits.

It's a good thing these license plate cloners didn't think of this back when those infalible RFID tags were around or else someone without an EZ Pass could have done the same damn thing and stuck someone else with the ticket.

Next thing you know somebody's going to create fake $100 bills. Imagine if underaged students started using fake IDs to buy beer! It's incredible that someone has just now thought of doing these things.