Woman gets an over $700 bill from confusion with SunPass, Lee County

Trena Capraro could hardly believe it when she got an official notice in the mail on Saturday.

“It’s my livelihood,” Capraro said. “It’s how I get to and from work. It’s how I pick up my stepdaughter up from school.”

Capraro told WINK News she had no idea why she received the letter. Nowhere does the letter say why the state plans to suspend her driver’s license unless she comes up with over $700.

When Capraro spoke with the Lee County Clerk of Courts, it informed her she had four violations for toll issues. The first and second were both for $222 while the third and fourth were each $133.

Lee County confirmed those toll violations in July and two more in August. Capraro told us she moved recently, so she figured the citations were lost in the mail. Capraro always had a SunPass transponder in her car, she says.

“There was money in the SunPass account and if there wasn’t,” Capraro said, “it was a little discrepancy, but we added money that same day.”

However, adding money to a transponder does not retroactively pay previous toll violations.

A spokesperson for Lee County told us LeeWay, which is an electronic toll collection, is required to send toll violations notices to a customer’s driver’s license address, which was done in July and August. In October, LeeWay forwarded those notices to the Clerk of Courts for non-payment.

What started as a small-dollar violation is now an expensive mess. The letter makes it clear if Capraro does not fight the fine in court before Christmas, the state will suspend her license.

“Change of address, I understand that was on me,” Capraro said. “But I don’t feel that it was $710 worth of a mistake, plus my license being suspended.”