Matthew Simonton keeps a tidy mailbox. Bills go in one pile. Junk goes in another. So when an envelope from the Kansas Turnpike Authority landed in the mix, he couldn’t tell if it was a scam, or real. He opened it anyway. Inside sat a toll notice from Kansas, tied to a tag number he stopped using when we were all still listening to CDs.
Simonton lives in Oklahoma City. Last time he travelled into Kansas, he was a teen. He’s 55 years old now.
The bill listed a plate number that fell off his radar back in 2009, when he moved on to a newer car and let the old tag fade into the past.
At first, he figured the bill was either a scam or a bureaucratic fumble. He took the mystery to Service Oklahoma. That didn’t untangle things.
He said he talked with several employees but never got a clear answer. Someone eventually told him the number traces to a truck, not the vehicle he once owned.
Service Oklahoma later shared a statement confirming that the plate number now belongs to another Oklahoma driver
They explained that the state does not reissue standard plate numbers unless they go through a statewide reissue. The most recent one happened in 2017 and only used long-inactive numbers…