New recent SMS scams

[WWGD]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/03/11/fbi-warning-delete-new-texts-on-your-phone/

 

[marcusl]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/03/11/fbi-warning-delete-new-texts-on-your-phone/

Yeah, I’ve gotten one of these texts. I was taken in for a bit, until I looked closely at the address it was sent from. What nasty people!

 

[jedishrfu]

Not to mention the followup guy who for a price in bitcoin will send a SWAT team to your home:

https://www.wired.com/story/torswats-swatting-arrest/

For more than a year, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has been hunting the person whom experts say is one of the most prolific swatters in American history. Law enforcement now believes they have finally arrested the person responsible.

A 17-year-old from California is allegedly the swatter known as Torswats, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The teenager is currently in custody and awaiting extradition from California to Seminole County, Florida. The Florida State Attorney’s Office tells WIRED that he faces four felony counts.

or more recently (Feb 2025) this fellow who's been attached to 400+ SWATTING calls:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/california-swatting-calls-sentence-teen.html

Sadly I couldn't quote the article as its behind a paywall. However, those of us wealthy enough to have a NY Times account might like to read this.

This is the guy Tyler Barriss on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting

 

[OmCheeto]

What's even more interesting is that along with receiving these fishing texts, I received a physical letter, delivered by the USPS, from an actual toll service about 50 miles from where I live. I haven't been over that toll bridge in at least 10 years. Anyways, I haven't heard any news of the agency itself being hacked, but it sure looks like it.

The USPS has been notified.

 

[jedishrfu]

It's likely that it hasn't. These scams rely on a scattergun strategy: They blanket an area, use plausible tolling agencies, and add a little fear to it.

It's like the old football pool scam, in which the scammer told 64 people that he could predict the next game in a string of games. Then, he'd send out prediction 1 to 32 that team A won and prediction 2 to the other 32 that team B won.

He repeated this process a few more times: 16 v 16, 8 v 8, and 4 v 4. Each time, he escalated the price of admission to the answer so that they could bet on a winner.
In the end, he won, and they mostly lost.

 

[pbuk]

I haven't heard any news of the agency itself being hacked, but it sure looks like it.

Surely it is more likely that your number plate has been cloned (is this a thing in the US? It certainly is in the UK).

 

[OmCheeto]

Surely it is more likely that your number plate has been cloned (is this a thing in the US? It certainly is in the UK).

Were there not this ongoing nationwide phishing scam, I would agree. But this is too bizarre a coincidence.

The letter also threatened blackmail, whereby if I didn't pay the fee and fine, the the bi-annual registration on my vehicle would be blocked. I'm up for renewal in two months, so the timing was perfect to prompt me to pay the bill immediately. It's interesting in that there is an actual state law which allows them to do this! I'm now wondering if AI was prompted to find such legal loopholes to target an audience like myself.

In any event, if this were not happening to me, I would not believe it, as it sounds quite absurd.

 

[jtbell]

The toll road's image recognition software might have misread someone else's license plate, as happened to me several years ago:

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/today-i-got-an-invoice-in-the-mail-for-1-10.855178/

 

[Mark44]

The toll road's image recognition software might have misread someone else's license plate

I saw something similar more recently -- don't remember where. Some nefarious person doctored a number in his license plate to look like one belonging to someone else. The person who got the toll bill was able to show that the picture of the license taken by the road camera had a digit that was unlike the same digit on his license plate.