Text message-based scams — or “smishing” — are back in Arkansas.
For at least the third time in the last year, scammers posing as a government entity are lighting up phones.
“Smishing” is a combination of “SMS,” meaning texts, and “phishing.”
The attorney general’s office put out a consumer alert Tuesday afternoon warning of the new scam, which involves a message from an Arkansas court system regarding an unpaid traffic citation.
Within 30 minutes of the alert hitting the inboxes of the state’s media, one such smish message was received by a reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
The text claimed to be sent by “Officer Martinez” of the Arkansas Department of Public Safety and the Arkansas District Court, and that Judge Elena Vargas “has ordered this action regarding your outstanding unpaid parking violations.”
No such judge exists in Arkansas.
The message mentioned a “mandatory resolution” in a court hearing, providing a date and time. It then said to “Reply Y to confirm or reply A to resolve the matter” or the court would issue an arrest warrant and suspend driving privileges, and that “additional criminal charges may apply.”
“Arkansas courts will not send unsolicited text messages demanding payment or directing you to click a link to resolve a citation,” said the alert from the attorney general’s office. “Scammers use official-sounding language, fake case details, and threats of penalties — such as license suspension or fines — to pressure victims into acting quickly.”
The attorney general’s office directed recipients to not click any links, not to reply and to report the messages as junk before deleting them.
Replying to this kind of message can confirm to the scammer that the number is legitimate.
As recently as last June, scammers attempted a mass campaign in Arkansas.
The Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, the department tasked with collecting state traffic fines, is separate from the Arkansas Department of Transportation.
Months prior, Arkansans were receiving smish texts centered on toll roads.
The only problem? Arkansas doesn’t have toll roads.
At the time, the highway department “received well over 100 calls or emails about this topic” from residents about the messages.
Attorney General Tim Griffin said then that a “high percentage” of these type of scams — at least the ones he has “personally put my eyes on” — originate from outside the country.
That “makes it even harder to trace,” Griffin said. “Sometimes it’s clear that it’s from out of the country because it’s an international number.”
According to a November story in The Atlantic, a scam in early 2025 that centered around the U.S Postal Service and supposed unclaimed packages may have been responsible for defrauding victims of “anywhere between $3 billion to $28 billion during a recent 16-month stretch.”
That story reported these types of scams are primarily based in China and involve what has been coined as the “smishing triad” selling software to third parties for $200 a month that allows them perform a “rolling” scam.
In November, Google announced it was taking legal action against “Lighthouse,” a large “phishing-as-a-service” entity.
“‘Lighthouse’ has harmed over 1 million victims across more than 120 countries, stealing somewhere between 12.7 million and 115 million credit cards in the U.S. alone,” said Google General Counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado as part of the announcement. “This represents a five-fold increase in these types of attacks since 2020.”
Reuters reported that Google claimed Lighthouse victims were attracted by nearly 200,000 fake websites over a 20-day period.
However, the tech giant doesn’t know the identities of the 25 people it’s suing, as they are all labelled as “Does” in the filing. They are also based in China, well out of reach of the American justice system.
According to NPR, Prado wrote in the filing that the lawsuit wasn’t about a day in court, but “deterrence.”
“It allows us a legal basis on which to go to other platforms and services and ask for their assistance in taking down different components of this particular illegal infrastructure,” Prado said.
Daniel McFadin is a general assignment reporter who has been with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette since October 2022. He previously worked at NBC Sports, and has also been a writer covering NASCAR for Frontstretch — which is not affiliated with the Democrat-Gazette — since 2014. Daniel also has and continues to be involved in podcasting at the newspaper.
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