Santa Cruz police shared a picture showing the difference between a fake and real parking ticket
Fraudsters and scammers have all kinds of tricks up their sleeves to fool the public to extract money. In one such case in the US, a 19-year-old man has been arrested after he designed fake parking tickets and put them on cars near a beach in Northern California. He was hoping to collect payments from them, CBS News reported. The tickets had QR codes that when scanned, would lead the victim to a website where they could pay their "fine."
The scam was exposed last Thursday when the police received a report that fake citations had been issued to parked vehicles in the beach area. Acting on the report, police caught 19-year-old Damian Vela, who they discovered in the beach area on Thursday evening. When the police searched his car, evidence related to the scam was found. Though the teenager admitted to the crime, he said that he did not receive any payments.
According to ABC7 News, Mr. Vela was booked into jail on suspicion of unlawful use of a computer system and attempted fraud.
On December 23, the Santa Cruz police department alerted the public to the scam and warned them to be careful. In a tweet, the police wrote, ''If you've received a parking ticket recently, check the fine print. Santa Cruz Police arrested a suspect for recently issuing fraudulent parking tickets in the city.''
Meanwhile, the cops do not know how many fake tickets the man put on cars or how many victims may have paid the bogus fines. Detectives are also looking for anyone who may have received a bogus parking ticket and are encouraging them to come forward.