The email looks like it came from the government. The subject line reads "Notice of Required Off-Cycle Update - Motus email," and the body tells you to click a button labeled "New MOTUS Portal" and update your carrier profile. Do not click it. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration says the message is a scam, and it has published the four website addresses the fake button leads to. The only real address for the federal registration system is motus.dot.gov.
What FMCSA's alert says
"Latest reports indicate that bad actors have started to impersonate the Motus (not an acronym and not all caps) website application," the agency wrote on its fraud alerts page. Carriers have reported emails urging them to follow a "New MOTUS Portal" link to update their profile. FMCSA tied the campaign to four domains: motusdatasboard.com, motusdatadesk.com, motuswebdeck.com and motusfunction.com. None of them is a government site. The American Bus Association told its members that one email it reviewed pointed to a fifth address, motusdatamonitoring.com, so the published list should be read as examples, not as the full set.
According to FreightWaves, the sample email FMCSA posted is dated August 2026, and the alerts page shows a September 11 update. The agency has not said how many carriers received the message, whether anyone handed over credentials, or whether any registration record was changed as a result.
Why it lands right now
The timing is not an accident. Motus went live on May 19 and replaced FMCSA's legacy registration systems. Carriers, brokers and other registrants now sign in through Login.gov, and the rollout has been rough enough that the agency has paused USDOT number deactivations for biennial updates due since June 1. Thousands of small carriers are expecting mail from FMCSA about their registration, many are behind on a filing, and few have seen enough real Motus correspondence to know what it looks like. An email about a "required update" fits right into that.
There is no such thing as a required "off-cycle update." The biennial update follows a fixed calendar set by the last two digits of your USDOT number, and the trade group that flagged the scam noted the email went to a carrier that had just completed its update. The stakes are higher than a stolen password. A Motus login controls the company's federal identity: the address, phone, email and officers on the record that brokers and shippers check before they tender a load. Carrier identity theft and double brokering start with exactly that kind of access.
Three tells in one email
First, the capital letters: FMCSA writes Motus, the scammers write MOTUS. Second, the domain: anything that does not end in dot.gov is not the federal system, no matter how official the page looks. Third, the urgency: FMCSA's own current guidance is that carriers behind on a biennial update get more time, not less. A message that contradicts that is not from the agency.
Checklist
What to do this week
Never reach Motus from a link in an email or text. Type motus.dot.gov into the browser yourself or use a bookmark you made.
On a computer, hover over any button before you click and read the address it points to. On a phone, press and hold the link to preview it.
Tell everyone who touches your registration about this alert: your spouse, your bookkeeper, your dispatcher, your compliance service. The scam only needs one person to click.
If you already clicked and entered anything, change your Login.gov password right away, make sure two-factor sign-in is on, then log in to the real Motus and check that your address, phone, email and company officers are still yours.
If something on your record changed, call the FMCSA Contact Center at 1-800-832-5660 or open a ticket at ask.fmcsa.dot.gov, and keep the ticket number.
Report the email to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. FMCSA also points carriers to local police and their state attorney general.
Sources: FMCSA, Fraud Alerts, "Bogus Motus App and Links," fmcsa.dot.gov; Land Line, September 16, 2026; FreightWaves, "FMCSA warns trucking companies about 4 fake Motus registration sites"; CDLLife; American Bus Association member alert.
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