A message on the phone, the inevitable urgent tone and a usually limited amount, with the request for immediate payment, under penalty of administrative detention of the vehicle, or the deduction of points from the license. Another case is finding a report on the windshield of the car (complete with letterhead, Municipality logo and QR code) that seems completely authentic. It’s there fake fines scam (also happened in our editorial office) and according to Adoc, the national consumer association close to Uil, cases are clearly growing.
The phenomenon is not new, even if the numbers for 2025 put it in a different light. The annual report of the CERT-AgID (the structure of the Agency for Digital Italy that monitors cyber threats to the Public Administration) recorded during the year 3,620 malicious campaignsfor a total of over 50,000 indicators of compromise issued to PAs. Among the themes most exploited by criminals we can find orders and shipments, home banking, fines and payments. And in particular, 2025 has seen a real wave of phishing using the PagoPA name as baitwith 328 specific campaigns which pretend to be payment reminders for alleged traffic fines, which have been massively active since May. The full PDF of the report is available on the AgID website.
How it works
The digital scheme is simple: the victim receives a text message or email with a link that refers to a site built to imitate the official one of PagoPA or a local authority. The cloned page collects payment card data or banking credentials. The amount requested is deliberately low, which encourages you to pay without thinking too much (in the image below, the fake message received by a member of the editorial team)
Alongside the digital variant, the paper version is growing, a false report left on the car, complete with institutional logos, protocol numbers and QR code which leads to a fraudulent page. Here too, the attention to detail has grown over time, making it more difficult to distinguish the fake from the original, at least at first glance.
The signs to recognize
Adoc indicates some elements that betray the scam, including grammatical errors, not very formal language, grainy logos, missing data (such as place and time of the infringement), vague or imprecise regulatory referencesand above all the payment request via link instead of through institutional channels.
We must remember that PagoPA never sends payment reminders via text message with direct linksbecause payments to the Public Administration take place exclusively through the official portal pagopa.gov.it or through the platforms of local authorities.
What to do
The basic rule is . In case of doubt, it is best not to click anything, check directly on the website of the Municipality or the body that issued the sanction, and report the suspicious message to the Postal Police. Anyone who has already made a payment should contact their bank immediately to block the transaction or card.
It is worth remembering, as Adoc points out, that road sanctions are notified by law by registered letter to the owner of the vehicletherefore a report that arrives only via text message and/or via email is already in itself a warning sign.
