Grandmother Unknowingly Caught In Sting Operation For Offering Rides To Burning Man

A 61-year-old grandmother was caught up in a sting operation by the Nevada Transportation Authority (NTA) and hit with fines after she offered to drive a festival attendee to Burning Man, the Reno Gazette Journal reports.

After picking up a friend and several other burners from last year’s mud-soaked event, Reno resident Susie Holland decided to offer rides again for the 2024 event, which returned to the playa of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert last week, August 25 to September 2.

However, this time around, her would-be burners were undercover agents for the NTA in the midst of a sting operation. As it turns out, offering paid rides to Burning Man, a practice so common that there is an entire Facebook group dedicated to it, is illegal in Nevada without the proper permits.

Holland told the RGJ that authorities swarmed her car upon picking them up and informed her she could face fines totaling up to $30,000 for violating three Nevada laws. These laws collectively require drivers to obtain a certificate for driving, deem it unlawful for a person to advertise driving services without the required certificate, and set a fine of up to $10,000 for the impoundment of vehicles for unauthorized use, according to the RGJ.

“When I pulled in… they just swooped up on me in three undercover Ford Explorers,” Holland told the RGJ. “They were coming at me so fast, so hard and so intensely, I was like, ‘What is happening right now?’”

In an email statement shared with the RGJ, NTA spokesperson Teri Williams said, “As a law enforcement agency, the NTA’s mission is to protect the traveling public, which requires that the agency regulate certificated and permitted providers as well as take proactive measures to identify and deter unlicensed activity.”

“Ultimately, people that engage in commerce of any kind must be knowledgeable about what is required to operate legally … the onus falls on the individual to be informed and in compliance,” Williams continued.

Holland, who is still awaiting her final bill from the NTA after being told her fees will be reduced, told the RGJ that 18 other cars had been towed as a result of the Burning Man sting.

“Clearly I’m just a grandma giving rides to the burn,” she said. “But they know what they’re doing. We just weren’t (aware). No one was aware of it.”

Read the full story from the Reno Gazette Journal here.

Featured image from The Burning Man Project. Credit: Robert Pierce.