The couple originally thought someone was scamming them because the violations were so frequent and expensive.

Greg Underhill and his wife felt shocked when they received a toll violation notice from New Jersey.

When authorities issued the violations, his trailer sat parked in his driveway in North Carolina, not skipping toll 500 miles away. Given the crazy circumstances, Underhill initially ignored it.

“Maybe this is a scam,” he told ABC11 during an interview.

The violations just kept on coming

Then the toll violations started piling up in their mailbox, all with pictures showing his trailer speeding through the booth. Before he knew it, he started getting more violations from New York and Maryland, too.

Now the Underhills were panicking, as the balance on their account eventually racked up close to $1,000 in fines.

“The unpaid toll bills were turned into collections. I think New Jersey’s over $600 now with the fees, the late fees. New York was over $200 and I think Maryland was over $100, so it was close to $1,000 for all of it,” said his wife Temperance.

Confused, frustrated, and in financial distress, the couple contacted the DMV for all three states. They grew concerned someone illegally copied their trailer’s plates to redirect violations.

Temperance got to work filing disputes with all three states, but she quickly ran into a frustrating roadblock.

“I went ahead and wrote up three packets of disputes, mailed them all in, and we got back from New Jersey that we still have to pay it or pay the collections to resolve it,” Temperance recalled.

A simple manipulation rerouted the toll fines to the trailer in North Carolina

Investigators with the outlet looked deeper into their violations and found something suspect about the license plates on Underhill’s trailer compared to the plate in the photos. A bit of black paint crudely changed a “9” on plate collecting violations to resemble an “8” with a simple line.

While the investigation was underway, the other state’s toll agencies shrugged their shoulders and demanded their dues. When the agencies saw the plate’s manipulation, they dropped all charges.

The couple felt grateful to have the balance removed and look forward to the violator being caught.