A phishing campaign is sweeping through New York, targeting motorists with official-looking text messages that threaten license suspension, default judgments, and steep fines for traffic violations that do not exist. Authorities say it is part of a coordinated national operation hitting drivers across more than half a dozen states.

The fraudulent messages arrive bearing the letterhead of a fictitious “State of New York In the Criminal Court of the City of New York Traffic Division,” complete with citations to real sections of New York Vehicle and Traffic Law to lend an air of legitimacy. Recipients are told they have outstanding parking or toll violations and are instructed to scan an attached QR code to remit payment immediately — or face escalating legal consequences.

New York State’s DMV issued a public warning about the campaign, and the New York City Department of Finance has posted an active alert advising residents that the notices are not from any city or state agency and should be disregarded entirely.

Investigators tracking the scam found a telling detail that exposes it as a mass-produced operation: fraudulent documents circulating in New York, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Michigan, and Florida all share the identical base case number — 26-TR-273196 — with only a state prefix swapped in to localize each version.

For anyone familiar with how New York’s traffic enforcement system actually works, the documents are riddled with errors. The New York City Criminal Court has no jurisdiction over parking or toll violations; those are handled by the NYC Department of Finance and the MTA or Port Authority, respectively. Legitimate moving violations in the five boroughs go through the NYC Traffic Violations Bureau, which communicates exclusively by U.S. mail — not text messages with QR codes. The scam documents also list figures identified as judges serving simultaneously as court clerks, a procedural impossibility under New York court rules.

The QR codes, if scanned, route victims to counterfeit websites engineered to harvest credit card numbers and personal data.

Authorities advise anyone who receives such a message to delete it without interacting with it. Drivers who want to verify the status of their actual driving record can do so through the official New York State DMV website at dmv.ny.gov.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)