The Ministry of Digital Economy has warned the public against fraudulent SMS and iMessage notifications that claim to come from the Sri Lanka Police Traffic Division and demand payment of traffic fines through links to the GovPay platform, the Daily Mirror reported.
The messages typically claim the recipient has been fined for a speeding violation. The Ministry said they are fake and form part of an organised cyber scam.
Neither the Ministry nor any other government institution issued such messages, it said, and the official GovPay digital payment system operates only through government-approved, secure channels — it does not request payment through suspicious or foreign website links.
The detail that makes this warning specific
The Ministry named the fraudulent domain being used: lygov.art.
That matters, because warnings about fake GovPay messages have been issued repeatedly in Sri Lanka this year without naming the infrastructure behind them. Sri Lanka Police warned in May about a fake traffic-fine SMS campaign mimicking GovPay, and again in July about fraudulent GovPay websites and scam messages. A named domain gives the public something concrete to check against.
Two things are different about Monday’s warning. The issuing body is the Ministry of Digital Economy, not the police — the ministry that owns the GovPay platform rather than the force whose name is being impersonated. And the lure is specifically a speeding fine, delivered over iMessage as well as SMS.
Hiru News reported the same warning, adding the Ministry’s guidance that the public should use only official websites ending in gov.lk when accessing government services.
What the scam is after
The Ministry warned that the messages are designed to deceptively obtain personal information and bank account details.
Its advice:
- Do not respond to the messages or click any link they contain.
- Treat with extreme caution any notification issued in the name of a government or legal institution.
- Access government services only through official government websites.
- Do not disclose personal or financial information to unverified third parties under any circumstances.
Context
The impersonation works because the underlying system is real and in wide use. GovPay is the government’s digital payment platform, and online payment of vehicle fines became mandatory from September — which means a motorist receiving a payment demand attributed to the Traffic Division has reason to find it plausible.
Not reported
Neither filing says how many people received the messages, whether anyone has lost money, or when the campaign began. Neither reports whether the fraudulent domain has been blocked or taken down, whether the matter has been referred to Sri Lanka CERT or the police Cybercrime Division, or whether the operators have been identified.
Neither states whether the fake messages spoof a genuine official sender ID, which would determine how easily a recipient could tell them apart from real notifications.
