Salt Lake City is warning residents about a sophisticated parking ticket scam targeting their cellphones.
The fake alerts sent via text message in recent days ask for payment of fees on “unpaid parking invoices” — and invite recipients to click on an authentic-looking webpage that spoofs the city’s own parking site, complete with an official logo.
Don’t do it, the city says. Don’t click the link, don’t reply and certainly don’t provide any payment information. Instead, the city warns, “delete and do not engage with the text message.”
In an advisory issued Monday and posted Tuesday on social media, city officials said the text solicitations “are not legitimate and lead to an unauthorized website that is a payment site unaffiliated with Salt Lake City or our service provider.”
It’s unclear how widely the scam texts were sent and how many might’ve fallen for it, but a technology expert said the city does not believe any internal systems were compromised in connection with the fraud activity.
According to the statement by Aaron Bentley, chief information officer for Salt Lake City, “the scam appears to be similar to another one cities around the country have recently encountered.”
The city was working with legal authorities, Bentley added, to address the matter.
If you’ve already fallen for the scam, the city says you should immediately report the fraudulent activity to your bank or credit card company, then file a report with the Federal Trade Commission online at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
Residents, meanwhile, can verify if they actually have any pending tickets through the city’s own payments portal — www.slc.gov/payments — under the “Parking & Civil Citations” link. That page lets you search for civil citations by ticket number, license plate number or payment plan.
And for reference, the city’s legitimate parking service site is at www.parkSLC.com. Its official parking app is called “ParkSLC.”
The city is also asking for others to share word of the scam to help stop it from spreading.
