Parking tickets are the latest vector for scammers to empty out bank accounts from New York to Southern California. Calgary became the latest North American city to address the growing trend of fake tickets on Tuesday. The Canadian city’s parking authority advised drivers to destroy fake tickets that are cropping on windshields and not to attempt to pay those fines.
How can vehicle owners tell fake parking tickets from the real ones? The fraudulent slips look nearly identical except for one small difference, according to CTV News. The fake tickets tell drivers to pay their fines at calgaryparkplus.com. The agency’s actual payment websites are calgaryparking.com/tickets and parkingtickets.calgaryparking.com. Vehicle owners can also call the agency to verify their tickets. On social media, the Calgary Parking Authority told drivers, “If you identify a fake ticket, destroy it immediately and do NOT follow any instructions on it.”
The scam seems to be a phishing scheme aimed at getting unsuspecting drivers to hand over banking information, credit card numbers, and other sensitive data through the fake website. Scammers targeting New Yorkers simply skipped the fake ticket step and will text their target to state that they owe parking tickets along with a link to a fake website. A similar scheme in Southern California has QR codes on fake tickets.
One can only wonder how successful these scams are considering that cities across the country are desperate to rake in millions of dollars from unpaid parking tickets.