ST. LOUIS — Toll scam warnings have been mounting for nearly a year.
Last March, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul released an alert, and the FBI did the same a month later.
In January, the Federal Trade Commission, New York’s Governor and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission followed suit, and that’s just to name a few.
“People have been really concerned about this,” said St. Louis Consumer Attorney Chris Roberts.
Roberts said he and his wife both got toll scam texts over the weekend, as did his law partner and a client.
“People have to understand, though, that these are not real text messages,” Roberts said. “They’re what’s called ‘smishing’ attempts, which is an attempt to get information from you by clicking on a link or going to a bogus website.”
The FBI told a parent company of Nexstar that it received more than 60,000 complaints in 2024 from people reporting suspicious messages about unpaid tolls. However, the state of Missouri doesn’t have any toll roads.
“If you miss a toll, that toll outfit is usually going to send you something by mail. They’re not going to send you a text message,” Roberts said.
The messages Roberts received included a link that appeared to be from Massachusetts’ electronic toll program—a state that’s also warned of the smishing scam.
“Sometimes it looks like it’s a foreign number. Sometimes it might even look like it’s from a random email address,” Roberts said. “Those types of things are telltale signs that these are scams and not legitimate types of text messages you should be concerned about.”
So what should you do if you get one of these toll scam texts? Roberts has a word of advice for those who may come across toll scam messages.
“Number one, delete them. Number two, if you’re concerned you actually did miss a toll, call up the toll outfit where the message is supposedly from, and they’ll have a record of that,” he said. “My guess (is) if they’ll say you don’t owe anything and it’s a smishing or scam attempt.”