Agent Tomcat (@agenttomcat)

SCAM ALERT This one is getting sent out by text. Someone I know received it and asked me if it was a scam. I confirmed within seconds because it was obvious to me, but it was spectacular that the other person even found it to be a cause for question. Scammers don't want you to think, they want you to panic, so just slow down, think, and ask someone who might know more: it can keep you from becoming the victim of a scam. Here are the things that instantly told me it was a scam without knowing anything else: • "Official processing portal" domain for the state of Kansas is suddenly "org-fxtop" with ".bond" where there should be ".gov" (they hope people focus on the "ksrevenue" subdomain and don't understand the rest) • Recipient's name wasn't present • Extra spaces • Weird brackets (those are called Black Lenticular Brackets, and they explain the extra spaces because they're part of the characters) • Weird grammar And these are the things that confirmed it after a few more seconds of scrutiny: • Unusually close deadline (the next day), meant to create a sense of panic due to urgency • In this case, the State of Kansas was texting from a 415 area code, which is in California • Stating a statute without mentioning which law or ordinance the statute is from (additional scrutiny reveals this isn't from any Kansas law—could be based on the way California indexes its laws) • Bulleted list of threats (kind of ironic considering what I'm doing right now) • Said threats describe cruel and unusual punishments (none of them make much sense upon subsequent scrutiny: they're unusually broad) I didn't receive this text, so I couldn't rely on the fact that I have no outstanding parking tickets to help me. If you receive this and do have an outstanding ticket, it might add credence to the message and induce panic, which diminishes higher reasoning skills. As a result, I'm sharing the things I could see without being the recipient. KDOR has issued an alert about it: https://www.kwch.com/2026/03/06/kansas-department-revenue-issues-warning-regarding-text-scam