CAPE CORAL, Fla. — Since December 2023, Fox 4's Colton Chavez has been looking into just how many people were being sent toll fees that LeeWay said they didn't pay, dating as far back as 2019.
Back then, Fox 4 discovered it was because the county had moved to a new invoice system.
On Tuesday, continuing to push for answers Fox 4 learned that Lee County had re-billed 467,000 individual tolls.
Since Fox 4's first story, people like Bonnie Small have said even if the tolls are valid, the timing of it, is not.
“It's the principle of it, we own a business we would not be able to go back and charge someone for something that was three years ago,” said Small.
After that, Fox 4's Colton Chavez took that concern to a Lee County spokesperson and asked through email, if there should be a forgiveness period for tolls if enough time goes by.
We also asked if any of the re-billed tolls could be a system error, meaning someone is being double billed.
As of Tuesday, a Lee County spokesperson county did not answer the question about whether tolls should be forgiven but did separately say any toll that was paid would not be re-billed.
Here is the full response from Lee County:
“Why am I getting billed from three years ago, I would have paid these three years ago,” said Small.
On Tuesday, looking for some sort of perspective Fox 4 did talk with Cape Coral Councilman Tom Hayden about the slew of re-billed tolls coming from drivers going into the city of Cape Coral.
“It's a lot I get why they are doing it because they are changing over to the new system and they gotta close out the other one and if they have outstanding bills they have to figure out a way to take care of those,” said Hayden.
If you have a toll dating as far back as 2019, please contact Colton Chavez.
