Members of the public are being urged to look out for two new parking scams affecting the North-East.
Durham County Council and other local authorities across the region are joining forces to warn residents of two scams linked to parking.
In the first, the councils are receiving a significant number of reports from the public of a text, pretending to be from the local authority, requesting urgent payment for a parking fine.
The message reads:
“Please Pay a parking penalty charge notice (PCN) issued by a local council. If you do not pay a PCN within 28 days, you’ll get a ‘charge certificate’ and you’ll have 14 days to pay the original fine plus 50% more. If you do not pay you’ll be prosecuted – you may have to pay a bigger fine as well as court costs. Please pay your fine at the link after reading the information.”
The scam text has been reported to have come from the following numbers:
• 07983474566
• 07367463054
• 07735553909
• 07904210588
• 07944625649
• 07903658070
• 07920624658
• 07471494043
As well as County Durham, councils in Northumberland, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Gateshead, South Tyneside, Sunderland, Darlington, Stockton-on-Tees, and Redcar and Cleveland have also confirmed they are receiving reports of the scam.
Parking and Traffic Regulations Outside London (PATROL) has issued a warning about this scam nationally, advising that local authorities will never request payment for a parking fine via text.
A legitimate Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) would be attached to the windscreen of the vehicle in a yellow envelope or sent via post to the registered keeper of the vehicle.
The councils are also warning of a second scam, in which QR codes are being placed on pay and display parking machines pretending to be from parking providers such as PaybyPhone and RingGo.
The fake QR codes take users to a web page that includes the logo of the provider, but uses a fraudulent website address, such as ‘pay–by–phone.com’.
Cllr Elizabeth Scott, Durham County Council’s Cabinet member for economy and partnerships, said: “We are aware of a number of new scams circulating at the moment aiming to take advantage of members of the public, particularly drivers.
“We would never contact vehicle owners by text, and we only accept payment at our car parks via the payment machine, or through the official PaybyPhone app or website. If you receive a text which asks you to click a link to make a payment – do not click this link. Delete the text message and do not make a payment or provide your bank details.
“Suspicious QR codes found in any of our car parks or parking places should be reported to parking services, which will investigate and inform the police.”
Anyone who believes they have been a victim of a scam should report the matter to Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk
Scam websites can also be reported to the National Cyber Security Centre at ncsc.gov.uk and fraudulent texts can be forwarded to 7726.
Members of the public can find out more about scams, how to report them, and how to protect themselves from scams at durham.gov.uk/scams.