The Oklahoma State Capital

GUTHRIE, Okla. — Domain pirates appear to have taken over a high-profile state government website once used by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT) to promote a controversial road-user charge program.

For the past four years, state transportation officials have advanced plans to transition Oklahoma motorists to a pay-per-mile system. The first stage of that effort, authorized by House Bill 1712 during the 2021 session of the Oklahoma Legislature, created a pilot program asking 445 volunteer motorists to simulate tracking their miles and paying a fee for each mile driven — effectively treating every state road as a toll road.

That legislation, supported by local Representatives John Pfeiffer and John Talley and Senator Chuck Hall (then-Representative Garry Mize missed the vote), established a task force to oversee the program. The task force’s final report, published in December 2023, recommended that the project move into its next phase, potentially including many Oklahoma motorists.

October 9, 2025 — Domain pirates appear to have hijacked an ODOT website domain, redirecting it to promote an Asian gambling page.

The plan, heavily promoted by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) and transportation industry interests, was slated for expansion in 2027. As part of the pilot program, ODOT hired a marketing firm and heavily promoted the proposal, encouraging motorists to visit FairMilesOK.com, the official website for the project. Many Oklahoma media outlets subsequently echoed the campaign and linked to the site.

Today, visitors to that URL won’t find information about road funding or transportation policy. Instead, the domain has been commandeered by overseas operators who appear to have purchased it after the state allowed it to expire. The site now hosts gambling content labeled “Keluaran Togel Hari Ini,” an Indonesian phrase meaning “today’s lottery results.” Togel—short for toto gelap—is an underground numbers game popular in Southeast Asia.

The site's new owners are likely benefiting from what is known as domain authority, in which search engines rank sites higher based on the credibility of other websites linking to them. ODOT’s official .gov website and numerous Oklahoma media outlets still link to FairMilesOK.com.

As of publication, active links to the hijacked domain could still be found on ODOT’s website, its Facebook page, and across a wide range of Oklahoma outlets including The Oklahoma 100, The McAlester News, Oklahoma Voice, The Southwest Ledger, Oklahoma Energy Today, The Journal Record, The Oklahoma Eagle, the OKC Auto Show X account, and even a document describing the Oklahoma program posted by the Maryland General Assembly.

The consequences may extend beyond search rankings. By acquiring the domain, the new operators also control its associated email accounts. During the pilot phase of the Oklahoma project, participants communicated through support@FairMilesOK.com. If participants now reply to archived messages, their emails — potentially including sensitive information such as login details, password resets, or tracking device requests — will be delivered not to state officials but to the domain’s new, likely foreign, owners.

Additionally, the email address could be used in phishing schemes, including the targeted solicitation of program participants who publicly identified themselves through social media posts promoting the project — many of which remain online.

Initially registered in December 2022, the state’s domain name appears to have expired in December 2024, roughly one year after the task force released its report. The Internet Archive shows that the road-user tax content remained live as recently as May 2025, suggesting that domain pirates may have replicated the site’s original material before converting it to gambling content.

The new proprietors of the site cannot be identified, as they are employing a domain privacy service that traces to Reykjavik, Iceland. A scan of domain records indicates the site is using Cloudflare anonymization services, concealing the identity of the underlying web server, while incoming emails are being routed through a Gmail server.

A review of the task force’s meeting minutes indicates that the state employed the services of a public relations firm to oversee the program’s outreach and messaging. In January 2023, the state received a $1.9 million federal award — roughly half of the total $4 million estimated cost of the pilot phase.

The authorizing legislation was carried in the Legislature by State Representative Brian Hill, who now campaigns for lieutenant governor. The task force responsible for making recommendations to ODOT included several high-ranking transportation officials and industry representatives, among them Oklahoma Trucking Association President Jim Newport, Transportation Director Tim Gatz, Hill, State Senator John Haste who carried Hill's proposal in the Senate, and Corporation Commissioner Todd Hiett.

In late 2024, Hill and Haste announced that they would not move forward with the plan's second phase, bringing the state's multi-year consideration of the idea to an end.

MORE: OPINION: How One Brave Candidate Might Have Ended The Plan to Make Every Oklahoma Road a Toll Road.