$20 Gets You Detained at Florida Toll Booths

[flourbug]

FLA Turnpike Authority has detained and taking the personal info of millions of people who give them $20, 50 or 100 bills. It seems they have been targeting young black and Hispanic males. This is illegal. So, they lied about it and then they tried to cover it up.

http://www.wtsp.com/news/mostpop/sto...2&provider=top

Welcome to Florida, the Sunshine State!

[rb.]

fb, do your ATMs dispense anything besides $20 bills? Ours don't, and when most use cash up here, it's 20s.

[flourbug]

rb, $20's here, just like there.

The Florida Turnpike system has the SunPass, a little device you put in your car that allows you to circumvent or zoom through toll plazas. You can add money into it online, but if you run out and go through a toll booth there's no penalty as long as you add money within the next week or so. 99% of the natives use the SunPass.

They say this is because of counterfeit bills but if you read the article they are spending 2x the amount on paperwork than the actual number of bogus bills received.

This really smells like a way to identify people who may be using toll booths to launder drug money. It's very easy to hop onto a toll road in Tampa, St Pete, Orlando or Miami, drive 50 miles each way, and come back with $1000 in nice clean bills. IF they are doing this to identify drug dealers, that opens a LOT of questions - who put them up to this, are they sharing our personal info with FL LEOs, what happens after they get the info, etc. In any case, it would seem to be very very illegal.

[Twoolf]

Its probably also being used as an incentive for people to use sunpass so they can further cut toll takers.

[rb.]

Interesting read, that article.