Wanna trick your way out of paying tolls on NY highways? It could cost you big fines

Toll cheats beware.

The penalty for obscuring license plates to avoid tolls on New York highways jumps to as much as $500 this month.

And it’s now a crime to sell license plate covers or other devices designed to trick license plate readers.

The measures, which went into effect Sept.1, are aimed at taming the surge in so-called "ghost plates" designed to fool electronic toll readers positioned along state and city highways.

Over the past year, state and local police departments have teamed up for dozens of enforcement sweeps, resulting in 450 arrests, 18,500 summonses and 2,100 vehicles seizures for $19 million in unpaid tolls and judgments, state officials say.

“These changes to the law are meant to make sure that everyone who makes use of public infrastructure is paying their fair share to use them,” said New York State Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Mark J.F. Schroeder.

Last year, the state Thruway Authority reported $407,000 in revenue lost to bogus transactions, more than doubling the $166,000 total from 2022. The number of phony transactions increased from 72,000 to 175,000 last year.

Regulations: Unpaid tolls surging on NY Thruway. What tricks are drivers using to avoid detection?

How New York drivers obscure their license plates

Drivers are deploying a host of techniques ‒ some crude, some clever ‒ to avoid paying tolls.

On the Thruway, one driver used an empty bag of Cheetos to obscure numbers on a license plate. Numbers and letters are altered by strategically-placed pieces of electrical tape.

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Others have turned to James Bond-style vanish plates powered by a remote device that flips the actual plate out of view and drops in a bogus one.

In February, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates bridges and tunnels in the New York City region, said covered, obstructed or phony license plates cost the agency nearly $50 million in lost revenue.

The new law applies to drivers who use a glass or plastic covering to hide a license plate as well as those who distort a photograph of the plate. Fines can be no less than $100 and no more than $500.

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Repeat offenders ‒ those with three or more convictions within five years ‒ face a three-month suspension of their vehicle registration.

Thomas C. Zambito covers energy, transportation and economic growth for the USA Today Network’s New York State team. He’s won dozens of state and national writing awards from the Associated Press, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Deadline Club and others during a decades-long career that’s included stops at the New York Daily News, The Star-Ledger of Newark and The Record of Hackensack. He can be reached at tzambito@lohud.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Wanna trick your way out of paying tolls on NY highways? It could cost you big fines