Scammers often do their nefarious business from far-flung places, preferring to digitally pick your pocket rather than literally pick your pocket. But old-fashioned scamming with physical media placed in person is still a thing, and the latest ruse could be right under your windshield wiper. Across the USA, a new fake ticket scam is popping up, and it requires the person doing the dirty deed to come right up to your ride.
Known as the “parking ticket scam,” the con is proliferating across the nation and is very simple in concept: Scammers place fake parking tickets on cars and simply wait for law-abiding citizens to pay what they believe is a real ticket – and payment goes to the scammer, of course.
Let’s take a deeper look into how big the problem is, how the scam works, and what authorities suggest to anyone who notices a parking ticket on their car in the future. This fraudulent behavior dates back to at least 2022 when police in Santa Cruz, California arrested a 19-year-old who allegedly admitted to placing fake tickets on vehicles near the beach. They obtained “evidence relevant to the scam” at the time.
That same month, police in Scottsdale, Arizona alerted residents about the same type of scam. “The ‘tickets’ look very realistic but there are a few red flags to indicate they are fake,” the department said.
The Scottsdale PD listed the reddest of those flags as:
- A QR code that leads to a payment site
- No option other than online
- No offense is indicated on the ticket
The QR code is the essential component of the scam. In some cases, scammers are merely trying to get the funds you believe are going toward a real ticket. In other cases, police say the criminals might be trying to gain access to personal devices. The warnings from 2022 evidently haven’t done much to end the practice.
This year, police in Nashville, New York, Florida, and California reported similar instances. The effort scammers make to fool marks with realistic tickets varies. At times, the fake tickets look very authentic, like these examples:
In the photo above, the ticket on the left is fake despite appearing to be basically a modernized version of the real one on the right. Printing it on thermal paper is a nice touch (well, not nice but you get it). Notice too that it only has one of the red flags (in this case the QR code) that the Scottsdale Police mentioned in their post from 2022.
Just last month, the Alhambra Police Department in California posted about the scam as well. Notice again, that the QR code is the big distinguishing feature here. Observe too just how similar the fake ticket in Nashville is to the genuine one in the bottom right of the Alhambra post.
Of course, in other places, like Florida, some folks don’t go to the same lengths for this scam.
Yes, that’s an actual photograph of a real “fake parking ticket” placed on a car in Florida. Just to be totally sure that nobody in the area gets duped, the local authorities provided this excellent direction. “We do not issue parking citations in the form of a handwritten note (see attached).”
The issue is big enough at this point that even the Better Business Bureau issued a warning about it in 2023. “It is so easy to print these fake tickets, stick them on cars, especially if they slap a QR code on them,” BBB PR Director Melanie McGovern to Denver 7.
“Most people like the convenience of scanning and being able to pay right there. That is where this gets tricky. That is why consumers have to be alert on where they’re parking.” The BBB and most law enforcement offices suggest commonsense approaches to avoid getting scammed.
Be certain about where you park. If you know for a fact that there is no chance of getting a ticket, you’ll be more suspect should one land on your windshield. Carefully read any citation that shows up. Government websites end in .gov or .ca (in Canada).
Consider how the ticket allows you to pay for it. Clearly QR codes are a giant red flag at this point, but some of these fake tickets allegedly allow you to pay buy mail via check. Finally, contact the government through verified lines of communication to confirm the ticket before paying it.
If you decide to pay a ticket that you’re not 100 percent sure of, use a credit card for the transaction. It can be easier to contest a fraudulent charge that way.
Top image credit: H_Ko/stock.adobe.com
I swear people are getting dumber.
Phone rings:
Um yeah hi, I found this parking ticket on my dash and the QR code isn’t working. I’d like to pay it in person.
Where is a good, quiet, out of the way place I and several others who also got tickets can meet with you?
OK we’ll be there in a few minutes, we just gotta stop by the ATM first.
*gets rubber gloves and a baseball bat*
As if they would agree to meet. These scammers are mostly cowards.
Well if they want my money they’re going to have to take it in person.
To hell with the baseball bat! Put on yer kickin’ boots, and get to kickin’ ass!
In Chicago, you can go to the Department of Finance’s web site and enter the (legitimate) ticket number and it will pull up the ticket information. I’m sure many other municipalities can have tickets verified this way.
Good on Chicago cleaning up their act. They were infamous for sending downstaters parking fines – usually coding errors when tickets were processed manually – and didn’t care if you had proof your car could not have been in the city.
Chicago is still a mess. It took me two tries to prove to the city that I sold a motorcycle more than four years ago. And even then, they tried to attach tickets to my name that weren’t even for vehicles I’ve ever owned.
I reckon the website is only better because people kept suing the city. lol
I’ve had my Sentra SE-R since it was new in 1993. When I moved to Chicago in 2008, I put it up on stands for a rod bearing job that I never got around to and turned out not to be needed; since I didn’t need the car for transportation (I rode my bike, and drove the G20 when I needed a car) it was seven years before I got it back on the road and registered it in Illinois. When I got my city sticker at City Hall, the clerk somehow knew that I’d owned the car since 1993 and asked me why it had never been registered in the city! I had no problem paying the amount of money that was appropriate (for that year only), but that sure surprised me.
I don’t know how long ago that was, but it’s been as above for longer than the 16 years I’ve lived here. I don’t tend to get tickets but on a few occasions when I got a ticket that I thought wasn’t merited (e.g. no city sticker even though it was right there) it was pretty straightforward to contest and it was dismissed. I think the last one I got was last fall when I was out of the country for two weeks and my new tags arrived the day I left, and I got a ticket for expired tags during the trip. Showed proof that I’d paid for them before they expired, I was out of the country, they were now on the car, etc and dismissed.
They also do some tricks where they get people to pay the scammer upfront instead of the parking company. Any lot where there’s a QR code indicating how to pre-pay parking, they can put a sticker over the real QR code with their own QR code and people unknowingly pay the scammer instead of the parking company.
That one can be a double whammy because if the parking company is checking cars, you will show up as having not paid to park and might get towed too.
Weird these look like the wallet inspector tickets I got
So that’s how they stole my identity /s
I remember getting a parking ticket on the mail from the city of Royal Oak, MI where they have all the right information about my vehicle but the picture was a Chevy Tahoe, not a Chevy Volt. The license plate last digit on the picture was blurry so I guess they just typed whatever number and came as my vehicle.
I called the city right away and they removed the ticket. What I found pretty interesting, the Tahoe had a sticker from the same dealership I bought the Volt, I guess when they issued the request of license plates to the DMV office, they were consecutive license plates, cars probably purchased around the same time.
Can these QR codes be reported to ISPs to install a redirect that sends users to anti-scamming advice?
The ISPs are probably the “bulletproof hosting” type that ignore abuse reports
I think a couple other notable indicators are missed here:
As the linked video at the end seems to mention, a real one should have a citation number and the issuing officer. They track these things, and that info is going to end up on the ticket itself.
If your ticket lacks a date, it’s almost certainly a scam.
If it’s telling you that the fine will go up if it’s not paid in a very short amount of time (like the pictured one with a $25 fine if paid in 3 days, $50 after that), it’s just creating a false sense of urgency to short-circuit your critical thinking.
One issue I don’t see on these examples, but seems somewhat common, is that it will be from the wrong agency. The neighboring town isn’t going to suddenly start issuing tickets outside their jurisdiction.
Really, just take your time to evaluate the situation, try to look things up on the official government website, and don’t be afraid to call (not the number on the ticket) the agency to verify it if it does seem legit, but you don’t know.
“Government websites end in .gov or .ca (in Canada).”
This.
Except for the City of Alhambra apparently:
At least “.org” is a non-profit domain, so it should be a little harder to get a fake one.
Also, if there is no phone number to call, that is a pretty big red flag too. Governments are usually some of the last to forego older tech.
Point taken. Another post here says outsourced collectors may have websites ending in ‘.com’. So it’s not as simple as I posted.
IMO the BBB has zero credibility.
Jokes on them, I never pay my parking tickets anyways.
Where I live you always get the notification from the mail and you can get the tickets and pay directly from the local DMV website. Seems like something that would end that scam.
Exactly, wait for the mail. Why are people so eager to pay a fine anyway.
Because I don’t want to get in legal trouble? I want the obligation to be gone and out of my mind.
I parked somewhere that turned out to be illegal in OCMD last year–we paid the ticket immediately. It was through the .gov website, though.
I wouldn’t get a parking ticket in the mail if I’m driving a rental car in a different state
In Denver parking violations never come in mail. It’s only done via hard-copy on your car, usually in the door jamb or the under the wiper. Parking tickets are extremely common in Denver, especially during “street sweeping” season when you have to read every damn sign in your neighborhood to understand what side of the road is legal to park on and when (i.e. every third tuesday April through November, no parking)…
I have fake parking tickets that say “VIOLATION $100 fine” in big letters but then in small print it says “This ticket was issued by a concerned citizen and is not an actual fine. This ticket is for entertainment purposes only.” I put them on assh0le parkers who take up 2 spots, for example, that sort of thing. If there’s even a moment of panic on their part, then maybe next time they’ll park a little better, and that’s the change we all want to see in the world. There’s no QR code and it’s not any sort of scam.
I actually wondered if this is partially vigilante justice in action. Why would you pay a parking ticket unless you were actually illegally parked?
I mean, scammers are the scum of the Earth and I hate them, but if someone pulled this on the a-hole in Mercedes’ apartment complex who illegally parks in a handicapped space I might be willing to accept the possibility that in rare instances two wrongs do make a right.
Back in college, I got a fake “gas guzzler” ticket on my Cadillac in the student parking lot on Earth Day, but that one was also printed in comic sans, which undermined the message in several ways
I had fake ones way back in my college days that said “PARKING TICKET: I hope you don’t fuck like you park, you’ll never get it in!”
I don’t bother with a ticket. If there is a shopping cart around, I use one of those huge HVAC zip ties. Shopping cart + zip tie + door handle or mirror = good entertainment.
Thanks for the laugh re: Florida parking tickets.
That is some genius level shit there.
At least they quit using a crayon to write them.
hello car driving person,
I am a Nigerian police officer, you have received a parking ticket and through my generosity as a law enforcement official, I am hoping to help clear this parking ticket from your record. send me $50 and I will handle this for you immediately!
You forgot a “kindly”.
and ‘Dear’
My super uptight boomer mother would totally fall for this. In her world something like a parking ticket is a panic worthy big deal.
When I was in high school I was in Boy Scouts. We cleaned out an old printworks place in town as a community service thing, and I found a box full of unused unopened ticketbooks with my town’s letterhead in the heading (and an original IBM PC XT and Model F both in box). Presumably they were the printworks that made them for the town police.
That year a lot of students in the school parking lot got fake parking and fix-it tickets
The hand-written ticket on index paper looks barely more legit than if it was written in crayon on construction paper.
DEER CAR OWNER
YOUR IN BIG TRUBLE MR.
YOU BETTER PAY 10 DOLLERS FOR THE BAD THING YOU DID
SINGED, CITY POLICE OFFISIR
It’s the physical media equivalent of those “Google-Yahoo-Microsoft Lottery” emails you get from Nigeria
This is why I only pay my parking tickets with Hyrulian Rupees.
Of course, if you’re not parked illegally, this is pretty moot, right?
There’s a lot of people who could be easily tricked into believing they were parked illegally.
When Boise started using the ParkMobile app, I kept paying at the meter, and I got a parking ticket while I had plenty of time on the meter, because the enforcement officer compared against app data and didn’t look at the meter. It was legitimate, though it was an error I got them to correct.
That said, I didn’t rely on the information on the ticket exclusively; I went to the city website and verified how to challenge the ticket. I would hope that anyone parked appropriately would try to challenge their ticket through proper channels, but I can see someone assuming it was some minor error or some lesser-known statute and just paying it to avoid a headache. Especially if they see the price will go up after three days (although that’s a hallmark of a scam, too, since creating a sense of urgency gets people to make poor decisions).
When I was a courier I got plenty of parking tickets without being parked illegally. I hate to disparage an entire class of people but most parking enforcement officers couldn’t hold down a job at <insert undemanding career choice here> due to the complexity.
I was a messenger (courier) back in the 80’s, using a gigantic Oldsmobile. One of the common drop points was at Attorney’s Title on LaSalle in downtown Chicago. I knew all of the sneaky-stealth “technically legal” parking spots under the Van Buren L and around the columns that hold it up. Unfortunately, they’ve redone the striping in a way that removes the ambiguity that I used to exploit.
Same, between runs I would wander around the usual spots and find all the legit and loophole parking spots. Those loopholes aren’t the faulty tickets I’m complaining about though. I’m talking about a temporary “No Parking” sign laying flat on the ground and impossible to see from the street and a PEO still writing tickets. My favorite is when I parked at a curb downtown, turned to my passenger seat to gather up my papers (maybe 30-45 secs), and then turned to exit my vehicle only to find a PEO right outside my driver-side door sliding a ticket under my wiper. I asked her what she was doing and she said the meter was expired. I told her I hadn’t gotten out of my car yet, what was I supposed to do, throw quarters out the window at the meter while trying to parallel park??? The ticket also said “unoccupied vehicle” despite me sitting in the driver seat. She said my windows were too dark and she couldn’t see me. They weren’t, they were the legal limit, and even if they were my windshield wasn’t tinted. Besides, with how quickly she was sliding that ticket under my wiper she had to have been right behind me and seen me just park my car. Long story short, I was able to fight that ticket and get it dismissed, but that still took 2 hours out of my life visiting the parking courts.
Note that not all government websites in the US use the .gov suffix (my own public sewer utility uses .org). Also, some municipalities will contract out parking enforcement and that contractor will most likely use a .com site. I think the only true way to protect yourself here is to independently find contact information for the municipality in charge and verify the citation there. You’ll also likely find options to dispute/appeal it if you think you’re in the right.
Nothing new… This has been going on in France and other European countries for at least a year… ( X link from the Gendarmerie about it : https://x.com/Gendarmerie_077/status/1657803947623546884 )
inb4 even real parking tickets are a scam lol
I’ll be honest, I think the scammers might get people to pay, just out of convenience of the QR code.
This seems like a fairly low effort way for fraudsters to make money with little chance of ever being caught. Obviously a low percentage of these will get payments sent, but if you place a 500 “tickets” a day (approx one a minute for 8 hour shift) and get a 1% compliance at 50 bucks per, that’s $7500 a month.
Not sure if the one percent hit rate is reasonable or not?