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The cops in Santa Cruz, California, were out in full force, arresting a 19-year-old they allege was behind a sinister plot to swindle unsuspecting beachgoers out of their hard-earned cash. The suspect, Damian Vela of Watsonville, had been placing counterfeit parking tickets on vehicles near the shoreline, complete with a QR code that victims could scan to pay the bogus fines.

When the fuzz confronted Vela on Thursday, he denied having received any payments, but it’s unclear how many fake tickets he had placed or how many victims had been duped.

This isn’t the first time police departments have warned drivers to be on the lookout for parking ticket scams. From Washington, D.C. to Pensacola, Florida, and Jefferson City, Missouri, it’s a crime that’s been popping up all over the country.

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I don’t know how much money he made off this scam, but I guess it was too much work for him to simply get a job.

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It’s amazing how some of these people will work so much harder at actually scamming and swindling people, than they would getting a “normal” job or actually earning the money honestly.

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I read about this and wondered if the people that paid were truly in the wrong.

If they were illegally parked, then parking enforcement wasn’t doing their due diligence in slapping a ticket first. Trust me, they can detect an infraction by mere smell and violations by beaches would be a hotspot.

If they weren’t parked illegally, then why would they pay the fine without trying to contest it first?

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Tourists. If you’re on vacation at the beach you gonna wait a week or longer to appear in the local traffic court?? Easier to pay and go back to enjoying your vacation.

As to “Why don’t they get a real job and/or earn money honestly?”, simple the thrill of being smarter than the victims and/or getting away with the crime. Maybe with a dash of vengeance thrown in against Beach going tourists “ruining” your Beach experience/community.

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@lamocon ​ I like the way you think. Additionally, this could be an opportunity for this young guy. He’s obviously got some skills.

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If the amount is low enough, it’s often not worth fighting. Generally contesting a ticket involves a court appearance and if you are a tourist, that means coming back to the city from where ever you’re from. The travel time to get there alone may be more than just the ticket. That completely excludes the “I have a crappy job that’s going to make it difficult to get at least one day off to take care of this, and that’s if I don’t have to make multiple appearances.” And while it’s a massive red flag to most of us, the ability to just wave your phone over the ticket and make the issue go away would be massively tempting to the general public that just doesn’t know any better.

That said, the “fake ticket” looks fake as hell. Like something that came out of a desktop printer. I don’t like to be that “Well I would never make a mistake” guy, but I sure wouldn’t scan a QR code off something I found even slightly suspicious.

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To answer the question of why people would pay. Perhaps he simply removed real tickets and replaced them with his. Poor user pays the ticket and then months later finds out they still owe money. Might be how the cops clued in and caught him.

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Doesn’t much matter if they were parked illegally or not.

Put a ticket on 20 cars at random, someone will pay without checking on it first.

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And some of us have learned from painful experience that it can be an exercise in futility to contest a ticket.

Two examples from my own experience:

  • Went to the airport here in San Diego, before the adent of the “Cell Phone Lot”, and pulled to the curb BEFORE the first sign that said “No stopping or standing”, where there was still no curb coloring indicating it was a restricted zone, and called my friend’s phone to see if his flight had landed. Airport security guy walked up to my car and told me, “There’s no stopping or standing here”. I apologized, put it in gear, and drove on. Got a ticket in the mail. Contested it by mail based on the info above. Got a reply, “Ticket was properly issued and is valid.” I appealed it in person. I was told, literally, that they can designate an area to be “no stopping or standing” with no legal requirement for them to LABEL the area as “no stopping or standing” for it to be valid and ticketable to stop your car there.
  • A couple years later, I hadn’t yet gotten my renewal stickers in the mail, but went to the beach anyway and parked, and got a ticket for “parking with expired sticker”. One, the state of California explicitly states on the DMV web site that it is legal and valid to drive your vehicle once you have mailed the registration renewal and payment. (This was before you could do it online.) Two, when I got my renewed registration in the mail, I could send them proof that my car registration was renewed two days before I got the ticket. Appealed the ticket. Got a reply, “Ticket was properly issued and is valid”, because the ticket was not for expired registration — the ticket was for “expired registration STICKER”.

I literally do not know a single person that has successfully appealed a vehicle ticket like this without spending more time and money than it would take to simply pay the fine, especially since they so often can find some loophole or interpretation that says, “We’re right, just pay the money”.

I firmly believe that the municipalities do this intentionally; that is, they set the fines low enough that it simply is not worth the time to contest the ticket.

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Dang… guess I’m the kind of person that won’t pay for a citation until I have at least inquired about it. And you can bet I’d contest a ticket if I didn’t think I was at fault.

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Well after getting burned twice with spending time writing up the appeal, taking a day off work to go to court, only to get shot down… you start to question whether it’s not more convenient to just shut up and pay the ticket. It’s like the people who will drive ten miles out of their way just to save $.02 a gallon on gas.

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At least this guy’s got some initiative! He may be going places (like jail, but it’s someplace right?)!

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It says he denied having received any payments but then suggests they have no evidence that anyone actually fell for the scam.

I’m thinking nobody actually fell for it and they were not denying anything but merely stating it didn’t work.

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That’s a really fake looking ticket, complete with coloured palm tree clipart.

It’s been a while since I got one here (UK), but I’ve never seen any official documents come with a QR code on them either.

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