It is a small notice that remains on the windshield and that can cause payment too quickly. And the scammers have understood this well. False parking fines and tickets have increased in recent months.
Check Internet Address and FPS Amount
“I almost let myself be fooled,” Clara tells Actu Toulouse. The young woman had parked at the end of November in the center of the pink city and upon returning to her vehicle she found what looked like a parking ticket. The message is quite clear, with the logo of the French Republic, 35 euros to be paid in two days and a well-underlined risk of an increase in the fine that could reach 135 euros.
A QR code appears on the ticket notice so you can pay for it online. It was when scanning it the next day that Clara identified that the web address she was referring to was suspicious, despite its name as “Official single site for the electronic payment of fines.”
Another sign that alerted Clara: an amount of 35 euros, which does not correspond to the official amount of the fine in Toulouse, set at 30 euros. A good way to check if the document you found on your windshield is real… or fake.
La formulation de la majoration est également suspecte: “Nous attirons votre attention sur le fait qu’une minoration de 135.00 euros sera ajoutée si le règlement n’est pas effectué dans les 2 jours ouvrés. Il est donc primordial de régulariser this situation as quickly as possible.”
Without a date indicated on the ticket, it seems strange to mention payment “within 2 business days”. Generally, the date and time of the verbalization appears there, along with the global amount. The reduced amount is specified separately, with the associated cut-off date and time.
The insistence – “It is essential to regularize this situation as soon as possible” – is also not in the habits of the administration or the private companies to which control of the parking has been entrusted.
Too much dematerialization?
Important point: We no longer really talk about fines for parking tickets since the privatization of control in France in 2018. We now find the acronym FPS, which stands for “post-parking package”.
With, for the offender, a variety of payment methods that can generate some confusion. In general, the FPS ticket invites you to pay your FPS on the site of the private company responsible for the control, for example Streeteo or Effia, or sometimes on a dedicated platform, such as this site from the City of Paris. An Internet address appears on the notice, possibly with a QR code for easy access.
There is also a public service site “stationnement.gouv.fr”, but it only works with post-parking package payment notices received at home. This is increasingly common, since it is no longer mandatory to place a ticket on the ticketed vehicle.
In Paris, for example, initially the famous “flashing cars” indicated to the teams on the ground the locations where the delinquent vehicles were located. But for several years, the data has been transmitted directly to the National Agency for Automated Infraction Processing (ANTAI), which is responsible for sending a payment notice to the address of the vehicle owner.
Excessive dematerialization that could affect all PVs, as reported by Alexandra Legendre, spokesperson for the Drivers’ Defense League association:
“Between emails reporting a fine that, rightly or wrongly, is not taken seriously, and scams with fake bills via SMS, motorists have not celebrated since the generalization of the dematerialization of fines,” he writes in Capital.
His association launched an online petition, “Stop the scandal of dematerialized minutes”, which has exceeded 180,000 signatures.
Also be careful with fake letters
At the end of October, the Morbihan gendarmerie also warned about false fine notices received by individuals in their mailboxes.
“Since this weekend, several people from the department have found a letter in their mailbox, in an unstamped and unmarked envelope, containing a violation notice in their name for a traffic violation,” the authorities write on Facebook.
“The blank, unfranked envelope” should already alert you to the suspicious nature of the mail.
But recipients may still be surprised by the information that appears in this false notice: “only the identity of the people and the license plate of the vehicles have been identified,” the gendarmes specify.
In reality, scammers personalize the notices based on data that is quite easy to find: the name of the mailbox and the license plate and make of the vehicle parked in front of the home.
As with the fake FPS, the document links to a fraudulent site to make payments.
To pay a fine for a non-parking violation: a single official site in France: antai.gouv.fralso with official applications in iOS AND Android.
Source: BFM TV
