The email notification system used by US federal and state government departments to alert residents of important information is used to send fraudulent emails, TechCrunch learned.
US state of Indiana said Tuesday that it “recognizes fraudulent messages allegedly sent by state agencies.” After seeing one email message sent from the Indiana Government Department, TechCrunch claimed that the recipients had a good toll balance, and contained a disguised link redirected to a malicious site.
An Indiana Institute of Technology statement said it was “working with the company that was used to deliver these messages to stop further communication.”
Indiana said the contractor's accounts were hacked and used to send fraud messages. The state said it was not aware that the “current state system” was being breached, but did not rule out previous violations.
The statement said that TechCrunch learned contracts with unspecified companies were Govtech's giant Granicus, which ended in December 2024, but the state claimed that the state “did not delete the state's account.”
When contacted in the comments, Granicus spokesman Sharon Rashen told TechCrunch: The company confirmed that the violation was caused by the compromised user account, but did not comment on Indiana's claims.
“The Granicus system itself was not compromised,” Rashen said. When asked, the company said it had technical measures to determine the number of individuals who received malicious emails, but did not immediately provide numbers for those affected.
Fake toll messages are increasingly common scams, as the Federal Trade Commission warned in January. The scam involves sending text messages and emails that the recipient claims they are owing money to distribution agencies across the United States. By targeting the email system the government uses to notify the public, scammers hope that victims are likely to release official emails.
The person receiving the scam message shared an email with TechCrunch. The fraud email was sent from the official Indiana government email address associated with the state emergency business center that coordinates responses and alerts in the event of a natural disaster or other emergency. The email allegedly claimed that the recipient had an unpaid toll in Texas, claiming that “failure to pay could result in penalties or vehicle registrations being retained.”
The scam email contained a link that appeared as the official govdelivery.com web address, but if you clicked it you will be redirected to a malicious site that is pretending to be the website of TXTAG, the Texas Department of Transport's road toll collection service.
The scam website attempted to allow users to take over their personal information, such as the user's name, phone number, home address, and credit card details. The site (and another clone site hosted on a similar domain) appeared to be offline on the US East Coast as of Tuesday morning.
An Indiana government spokesman did not immediately comment.