What to do when victim of ID theft involving car + toll in NSW

I hope it won't happen to anyone. It was traumatic for us for a time.... Sharing our experience and what to do (just in case).

The background is a relative got his ID stolen. Someone in NSW stole a car (reported stolen to the police) and the car was "transferred" to our relative. The thief then drove the car everywhere without a toll tag. We found out about the ID theft when stacks of toll notices arrived.

If you unfortunately find yourself in our situation, what to do ?

1. Report to the police. Leave a statement. In our case, we dropped by the police station nearby. Formally lodged the case about the ID theft. The police will then issue an "event number".

2. Get in touch with Linkt and E-Toll. Note we got toll notices from both companies. In any correspondence with either, always include the event number and mentioned a case has been lodged with the NSW police. They will also ask you to provide details/number of each toll penalty notice they sent out. E-Toll was easy to deal with. Fairly quick to sort out the situation once we had the event number from NSW Police. Linkt took longer and several calls to sort out the situation. Best to call Linkt's help line. Get a reference number (easier to follow up or you will be passed around like a hot potato). Plus send emails to maintain a paper trail.

3. Note... We did not pay any toll notices from the get go.

4. This is the key step. Go to Service NSW. Explain the situation/background. Submit a form/letter to instruct Service NSW to "reverse" the car title back to the original owner. Once we did that, the toll notices stopped coming.

Overall, it was a stressful experience. But we were lucky because Michelle from ServiceNSW North Sydney personally guided us through the process. She liaised within ServiceNSW to figure out what we needed to do (it was not a common scenario apparently). Once she had the answer, she called us and asked to drop by and explained the steps involved.