Nevada grandmother faces up to $30K in fines for offering rides to Burning Man revelers – launches GoFundMe to pay them

A grandmother is facing tens of thousands of dollars in fines after she was busted in a sting operation this weekend for giving revelers rides to the annual Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.

Susie Holland, 61, thought that she would offer a helping hand and make a little extra cash on the side by offering car rides to the festival-goers, also known as “Burners,” this year, according to a report.

But when she arrived to pick up the Burners at a location they’d agreed upon while speaking online, she was immediately surrounded by the Nevada Transportation Authority.

“When I pulled in … they just swooped up on me in three undercover Ford Explorers,” Holland told the Reno Gazette Journal . “They were coming at me so fast, so hard and so intensely, I was like, what is happening right now?”

Holland posted a Craigslist ad three weeks ago offering rides to the event, which draws up to 80,000 people annually.

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She was contacted for a ride and — unaware of the going rate — she said she would take them to the festival for just $65. The supposed Burner, in turn, offered $500 if she offered to come back and pick them up.

But then the “Burner” went radio silent for weeks before responding with a meeting time and date, leading Holland to suspect “something seemed a little off,” according to the Gazette Journal.

She agreed to pick up her party at the parking lot of the Grand Sierra Resort at 6:30 a.m. on Monday — however, when she arrived, she was met by NTA agents who boxed her car in and told her she had broken the law.

“I’m 61 years old, you know,” she joked. “I’ve never been in a situation like that.”

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Police told her she was facing up to $10,000 per violation for the three laws she apparently violated for driving without proper certification — totaling a whopping $30,000.

“The NTA’s mission is to protect the traveling public which requires that the agency regulate certificated and permitted providers as well as take proactive measures to identify and deter unlicensed activity,” Teri Williams, a spokesperson for the agency, told the newspaper in an email.

“Ultimately, people that engage in commerce of any kind must be knowledgeable about what is required to operate legally … the onus falls on the individual to be informed and in compliance,” Williams wrote.

They also impounded her car, leaving her without a means to get to work.

Holland paid $1,000 in cash to the NTA to release her vehicle and another $500 to the impound lot. When she went to pick up her car, an employee told her that 18 cars had been impounded in the same sting operation.

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Luckily, the NTA told her that as a first-time offender, her fees would likely be reduced. Now she is waiting for the final bill, which is expected in a few months.

Holland said she hopes her story will alert others to the potential consequences of driving festival-goers to Burning Man.

“Clearly I’m just a grandma giving rides to the Burn,” Holland said. “But they know what they’re doing. We just weren’t [aware]. No one was aware of it.”

The grandmother has never even been to Burning Man. She said she got the idea to offer rides this year after she had an incredible time picking up a friend and some others who had gotten stuck at the week-long festival last year following torrential rains .

Holland said she got a kick out of listening to their crazy stories.

“I’ve never been, probably will never go. It’s not my kind of thing,” Holland told the newspaper. “But we were talking and [they] suggested I do it the following year, like just give rides.”

She’s launched a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the cost of her fines.

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