ATLANTA — If it’s late at night and you see a parking ticket on your car, your first instinct may be to just pay the ticket. That is exactly what some scammers are hoping you do.
A group of scammers are placing fake parking tickets with a QR code on cars around Atlanta and hoping you don’t notice the small mistakes.
Briyanna Thompson was moments away from paying a parking ticket she found on her car, when she saw posts on social media about fake tickets and realized her ticket was fake, too.
“Just stay aware, because they’re putting them everywhere,” she told Channel 2′s Matt Johnson. “It took a lot of effort for them to do that, so I’m just glad I caught it.”
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The Atlanta Department of Transportation confirmed to Johnson that the ticket Thompson received was fake.
Thompson said she was parked near Buckhead Saloon when she and a friend both spotted the tickets on a windshield.
The same fake ticket showed up on another windshield on Collier Road near Piedmont Hospital two weeks ago.
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Johnson uncovered some ways to determine whether or not your ticket is real.
The fake ticket never has an exact location of where you parked, only a general area. A real ticket will have your exact location and your license plate number.
The fake ticket also has a QR code that sends you to atlcitations.com when scanned. It asks for your personal information and billing information, but the website is a scam too.
Channel 2 Action News hasn’t been able to obtain the exact number of fake tickets that have gone out, but the Buckhead area seems like the most common place to find them.
If you end up paying the ticket, it could cost you as much as $75.
“I have a friend who got the ticket and she paid, so they are getting people left and right with this,” said Thompson.
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Atlanta police are working with the Atlanta Department of Transportation to figure out who is responsible for this scam.
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