Cincinnati police are on the hunt for an opportunistic con artist who managed to sell about $2,000 in parking spots to a lot that didn’t belong to him. The incident occurred shortly before a professional soccer game in the city.
The man, who has not yet been identified, showed up to the vacant lot on July 9, several hours before the game started. He showed up so long before the game that he got there ahead of the attendants who work for Tri-State Parking, which operates lots.
The lot is owned by the Freestore Foodbank non-profit, which recently closed the doors to its Central Parkway location. While the building sits vacant, it decided to use the lot to make some money by renting it out to Tri-State Parking.
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“Basically, he set up fake cones and fake tickets and sold out the entire parking lot before Tri-State got there,” Kurt Reiber, president of Freestore Foodbank, told WXIX. “This was probably four or five hours before the game even started.”
The man posing as a parking attendant reportedly charged drivers $40 per spot, more than the $25 normally charged by Tri-State Parking. Police say the man managed to fill around 50 spots before a parking attendant arrived and confronted him.
Before police could arrive, the man took off with his ill-gotten gains. According to Reiber, the drivers who paid too much for the fake parking ticket, were in for another frustration, as the real parking attendant ticketed them all.
The food bank claims that it could have made $1,600 from the money that the fraudulent parking attendant took. They claim that could have fed 5,000 children in the area, and Reiber asks that the man donate some of the money to the non-profit. Police say they are investigating the issue as a Grand Theft.
Lead image: Cincinnati Police Department District 1