Malaysian tolls. What a nightmare.
Just last week, I was on my way to an event, and I was caught in a 1-hour traffic jam, right after the infamous Sungai Besi toll.
And don’t get me started with tolls during school holidays. I don’t want to elaborate more on what happened yesterday at the Gombak toll. It just makes me want to puke reliving those “moments”.
If you have ever been stuck in a traffic jam, especially in the bustling city of Kuala Lumpur, you know the feeling.
Cars stretching as far as the eye can see, the occasional honk of frustration, and that little moment of anxiety as you reach the gantry, hoping your Touch ‘n Go card has enough balance left to get you through.
Just as we were all bracing for another round of holiday traffic, a different story about tolls and Touch ‘n Go made the news. And no, it’s not about how busy it is. We don’t cover that.
In Negeri Sembilan, police arrested a husband-and-wife team who allegedly used hacked Touch ‘n Go cards for their transport business. Losses have been tallied at nearly RM60,000, and it is the first case of its kind uncovered in the state.
A Couple, A Company, and A Stack of Hacked Cards
The couple ran a logistics firm with 160 lorries. Investigators say they bought compromised cards in bulk, each one showing a balance of RM300 but costing them only RM150 to RM200.
Drivers were given these cards to cover tolls, trimming operating costs in the process. When police moved in, they seized more than 300 hacked cards, RM400,000 in cash, several mobile phones, and even a recording set.
The trick itself was straightforward. Someone hacked and tampered with genuine Touch ‘n Go cards using software and tools easily found online.
Someone, still unidentified, manipulated the balances before selling the cards on. For more than a year, those cards were in use across toll plazas, quietly siphoning losses away from the operator.
It was Touch ‘n Go that first noticed the problem. In July, discrepancies started appearing between what toll plazas collected and what was being claimed.
By August, the company reported nearly RM60,000 in losses from 213 compromised cards linked to this single firm. The investigation now raises the possibility that other companies may have also tapped into the same supply.
Our Trust is Taking a Toll
For the couple, the law caught up quickly. They were remanded under Section 420 of the Penal Code for cheating.
For everyone else, the case leaves behind uneasy questions. We use systems like Touch ‘n Go daily, trusting that they are secure.
If something as ordinary as a top-up can be manipulated, what does that suggest about the resilience of the wider digital infrastructure we have built around us?
Fraud is rarely an isolated incident. Small cracks often reveal bigger weaknesses, and in this case, the hacked cards show how fragile even a familiar system can be when pushed by people willing to exploit it.
Three days on, the supplier behind the hacked cards is still out there. Living freely.
Was this just a clever scammer finding a loophole, or someone willing to sell out the trust we all rely on every day?
Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Malaysia based on images via Freepik and Touch ‘n Go.
