Area residents targeted in new cell phone text scam

A new cell phone scam is targeting Marion County residents with bogus messages and threats about unpaid parking tickets and outstanding tolls.

A Marion resident received a series of these messages Tuesday, each one pretending to be more urgent.

Many of these so-called smishing efforts — phishing via cell phone text messaging — purport to be from the Kansas Department of Transportation or the Motor Vehicle Department of the Kansas Department of Revenue.

Scammers impersonating personnel at those departments send urgent SMS texts demanding immediate payment. These messages sometimes threaten license suspension to pressure victims into clicking malicious links.

Many cell providers will mark these texts as suspicious, but some do not.

In Kansas, the Department of Transportation does not manage tolls and will never request payment by text. The Motor Vehicle Department also will never send texts demanding payment of warning of suspended driving privileges. Official notifications are sent only through the U.S. Postal Service.

The agencies urge recipients not to click on links within suspicious texts. Doing so can expose sensitive personal and financial data to scammers. People who think they might actually owe a fine are being urged to contact the relevant organization directly through official channels rather than using a link provided in a text.

Drivers can check the status of their license for free at www.kdor.ks.gov/Apps/DLStatus/login.aspx.

To help others, recipients of scam texts are being urged to use their phones’ “Report Spam” feature before deleting the texts.

Drivers who already have provided information to a fraudulent website are being urged to contact their banks or credit card companies and ask that they freeze affected accounts. Incidents also can be reported to reportfraud.ftc.gov or ic3.gov.

According to the state departments, Kansas is one of several states being hit by a coordinated effort.

In the case of the texts received Tuesday by a Marion County resident, several other things were suspicious.

The text itself indicated it was part of a group chat.

The originating cell phone number also was listed as an international number, beginning with +44, indicating the United Kingdom.

Links within the text also were being sent not to .gov top-level domains but to .at and to .top domains.