ANTIOCH, Calif. — Sandy and Terry McGee, residents of the Bay Area’s Contra Costa County, thought they’d recovered from a burglary at their home nine years ago. Now they’ve learned the crime didn’t end there.<\/p>\n
Instead, another theft was quietly unfolding all these years — and they didn’t know it, until an Orange County transportation agency, some 400 miles south of where they live, suddenly confiscated their tax refund.<\/p>\n
The agency said Terry owed $10,000 in unpaid tolls and penalties, for driving in a commuter lane 400 miles from his home. The McGees say that was impossible. Only later did they realize it began with that burglary.<\/p>\n
“We thought it was over,” Sandy McGee said, tears running down her face. “It’s is forcing me to relive it, the robbery, It’s horrible.”<\/p>\n
The memory is still vivid. She’d just arrived at work at a a local public school when a neighbor called to say four men had just broken into house in Antioch. She jumped in her car and raced home.<\/p>\n
“I pulled up, there was a cop car. My door was open, the glass on the door was broke,” Sandy McGee said, pointing to the glass paned front door. “There was broken glass on the ground. I went upstairs and opened the door and that’s when I saw my house was ransacked. All the drawers were opened in there, stuff was all over the ground. my mattress had been lifted up.”<\/p>\n
“We didn’t sleep for months,” Terry McGee recalled. ” We’re up in the middle of the night bumping into each other making sure the house is safe. This affects you very badly.” .<\/p>\n
The thieves took jewelry, watches and a laptop, but most heartbreaking, a box of family keepsakes.<\/p>\n
“I remember the feeling of opening that drawer and seeing that box gone,” Sandy said.<\/p>\n
“It was my girls’ baby teeth and my girls’ bracelets from when they were born, stuff from my dad’s funeral. The little prayer cards, the program, my grandmother’s funeral program. The gold locket with her pictures in it. It’s gone,” she said wistfully. “I don’t care about the other stuff. This box had the only things I care about. It doesn’t mean anything to anybody but me. It can’t be replaced.”.<\/p>\n
The burglary was hard enough. They had no idea another crime had been brewing for years — until they filed their tax returns last spring.<\/p>\n
“I was really excited, Sandy recalled. “It was $1,052.”<\/p>\n
The couple was expecting a state tax refund for the first time in decades.<\/p>\n
Instead, they got a notice from the Franchise Tax Board saying their refund had been intercepted by an agency they had never heard of: the Orange County Transportation Authority.<\/p>\n
“When I first read it, I thought it was something I did because I go to Disneyland often,” Sandy said. But what they discovered was shocking. “They told me 161 citations, totaling over $10,000,” Sandy said.<\/p>\n
The agency claimed Terry had been driving his car in the 91 Express Lanes in Southern California for years without paying tolls.<\/p>\n
But the McGee’s say that was impossible.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t believe it because I didn’t even know what the 91 Express Lane was or where it was or how I could have possibly made these fines,” Sandy said.<\/p>\n
The 91 is an 18-mile stretch of commuter lanes between Riverside and Orange counties, about 400 miles south of Antioch.<\/p>\n
“They told me it was a Cadillac registered to Terry McGee and that he’d been driving on this and not paying the tolls,” Sandy said. “I tried to tell them we don’t live in SoCal. We live here (in Antioch) , and we were born and raised here. It’s not us. I could show you I was at work. I could show you he was here. And they basically said that you could have let someone use your car,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief..<\/p>\n
Then Sandy recalled that six years ago, a San Bernardino County sheriff’s detective told them a man used Terry’s driver’s license to buy two cars. She realized that man must’ve been the one to rack up those fines.<\/p>\n
And it started with that burglary.<\/p>\n
“They took Terry’s old driver’s license. They took his Social Security card. They took a birth certificate, a marriage license. They took my passport, my birth certificate,” Sandy said.<\/p>\n
“The fact that we haven’t heard anything for all these years, I never thought about it again because we did not hear anything until I got that letter, (from the Franchise Tax Board)” she said.<\/p>\n
“I thought it was over,” she said, referring to the burglary. “Every time I talk about it, I cry every time.” .<\/p>\n
Life had been quiet all these years, but now they wonder if they are unaware of other ways thieves may be using their identities .<\/p>\n
“You’re on the edge waiting for something else to drop. What’s going to happen? Because it happened to Terry. It could happen to me. They got my passport. They got my birth certificate,” Sandy said.<\/p>\n
“Now I got somebody stealing who I am. Someone’s pretending to be me. It’s like I’ve lost my identity,” Terry said.<\/p>\n
Sandy disputed the toll charges with the transportation authority, but she says the agency required her to prove Terry didn’t own the car. The problem: They never saw the citations, which were mailed to a different address for years. She didn’t even know the license plate or make of the offending car. Neither of their two cars had any violations on their record.<\/p>\n
“I just told them that our house was robbed and that they stole our identity and that this was not us,” Sandy said.<\/p>\n
Sandy says she sent the police report listing the stolen identification three times, but no results. She also sent their FTC identity theft report and a DMV letter warning someone was using Terry’s driver’s license name and number on a counterfeit license.<\/p>\n
Still, she says, there was no response.<\/p>\n
“And one time they told me they didn’t get (the police report). One time they told me it was not legible. And then another time they told me they only got a part of it,” Sandy said.<\/p>\n
“I’m crying on the phone. I’m yelling at these people, how am I going to prove to you that that is not us? What do you want?” she said.<\/p>\n
“They said, ‘Oh well, you need to file a police report.’ I already did that,” Sandy said.<\/p>\n
Sandy says the agency warned it would garnish all payments the couple gets from the state, like tax refunds or lotto winnings, until the $10,000 debt was paid.<\/p>\n
“Oh, it was awful. It was maddening,” Sandy said.<\/p>\n
Nine years after the burglary, Sandy still tries to find stolen keepsakes. She searches Facebook Marketplace and local pawnshops, hoping someone is selling her grandmother’s gold locket or silver coins, or her daughters’ baby bracelets.<\/p>\n
She believes she found the coins for sale a couple of years ago, but the woman selling them didn’t show up at a meeting place in a restaurant parking lot.<\/p>\n
“So I look for jewelry, keep hoping to get something back,” Sandy said. Even if I never get that tax refund back, I still hope to find those family things.”<\/p>\n
“It’s horrible. It’s like it’s in my face and nobody did anything about it,” Sandy said.<\/p>\n
7 On Your Side reached out to the transportation authority, which declined to discuss the case, citing privacy laws, but the team pushed for answers.<\/p>\n
7 On Your Side told the agency the dispute process seemed to be ignoring their documented identity theft in researching who who actually register4ed the offending vehicle.<\/p>\n
Someone listened.<\/p>\n
The agency reviewed the documents and determined Terry was not the registered owner after all. It dismissed all 161 citations.<\/p>\n
And as for the tax refund, the couple got that back too.<\/p>\n
“Thanks to you guys. I honestly never thought I’d get that back,” Sandy said.<\/p>\n
“Once we got hold of you, boom, they called us and started listening to us and things started happening, so we definitely appreciate that. It made the biggest difference,” Terry said.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Orange County Transportation Agency told 7 On Your Side:<\/p>\n
“Because of California’s strict customer privacy protections, we are not allowed to discuss details of individual accounts or specific issues such as those you are asking about. What we can say is that we encourage people to contact us if they believe there has been an error. We are always willing to work directly with anyone to review their concerns and address issues as appropriate. Millions of trips are taken every year on OCTA’s express lanes, and we are proud of our long history of offering not only safe, reliable and time-saving travel options, but also providing positive customer service experiences.”<\/p>\n
The couple is relieved, but they’re left to wonder if their identities are being used for other illegal acts that could suddenly disrupt their lives, as happened here. Terry has changed his driver’s license number and may change his Social Security number.<\/p>\n
He says the DMV suggested he do that, but experts say those are drastic measures that can further complicate your life. Those old numbers would still be attached to your name, and changing a Social Security number can make it hard to verify who you are.<\/p>\n
If your identity is stolen, it’s important to file a police report and an FTC identity theft report, so you can point to that if someone else impersonates you. Also, consider putting a fraud alert or freeze on your credit report.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANTIOCH, Calif. — Sandy and Terry McGee, residents of the Bay Area’s Contra Costa County, thought they’d recovered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[148545,163,165,164],"class_list":["post-366084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-148545","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}