A man who drove over the Ben Franklin Bridge between New Jersey to Philadelphia more than 200 times without paying the $5 toll can be charged criminally for theft in addition to civil penalties, according to a judge’s ruling.

Daniel Marks, of Gloucester City, drove through the E-ZPass only lane on the Ben Franklin Bridge 220 times between May and November of 2016, as well as four times over the equally-priced Walt Whitman Bridge, according to court documents. He evaded $1,120 in tolls and racked up $5,600 in administrative fees, driving over both bridges 224 times in 198 days (that’s an average of more than once a day from New Jersey to Philadelphia. There is no toll from Philadelphia to New Jersey).

In a Camden County Superior Court ruling published this week, Judge Steven Polansky rejected a motion by Marks to have his February 2017 indictment vacated.

Marks had argued that prosecutors failed to present the grand jury evidence with “any physical or verbal act of deception,” comparing driving over the bridge without paying a toll to a case in which a man was not billed for gas used in his home due to a clerical error (a court ruled that did not constitute theft).

The violations were sent to Marks’s girlfriend, as she was the owner of the vehicle. She did not respond to fees until contacted by police, and told Marks had been driving the car during the toll violations, according to the ruling. Marks ultimately surrendered himself to Delaware River Port Authority police and admitted to evading the tolls as well as ignoring violation notices, according to the ruling.

But the judge didn’t buy his argument, and ruled driving over the bridge repeatedly without paying is a theft.

“Defendant repeatedly drove through the EZ-Pass Only lanes for the purpose of avoiding payment for the service, use of the bridge, and concealed this from toll collectors,” the ruling states. “Driving through the EZ-Pass Only lane has no significant difference from placing a false slug or token into an unmanned toll collection receptacle."

Polansky ruled that the tolls, while only $5 each, could be aggregated to their total, which placed the theft between $500 and $75,000. That’s an amount constituting a third degree crime.

He also ruled the civil penalty of $5,600 was not mutually exclusive to third-degree criminal theft charges.

Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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