Stina Odencrantz received an unwelcome surprise on his car at the beginning of July. There was a yellow note fluttering under the windshield wiper that looked like a parking fine, but on closer inspection the fine turned out to be fake.
News24 have talked to Arnaud Matzbusiness developer at the Swedish Transport Agency, who reveals the tricks to see if your parking ticket is genuine or an attempt to cheat you out of money.
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Stina Odencrantz has previously told Nyheter24 that the fake parking ticket was very similar to a regular fine. She was close to falling for the fraud, but luckily she decided to appeal the fine on the police’s website.
There she noticed that everything was not right.
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So what separates a fake p-bot from a real one?
According to Stina Odencrantz, she could see that the ocr number did not match and the times were wrong. In addition, the amount of the fine was outrageously high.
Nyheter24 has spoken to Arnaud Matz, who works as a business developer at the Swedish Transport Agency. He agrees with Stina Odencrantz that the fake ocr number reveals the fraudster, as it does not lead to the Swedish Transport Agency.
He admits, however, that the p-bot was skillfully executed, but to the trained eye there were a few more tell-tale factors.
– In this case, there were very few mistakes that you could see in the fake p-bot, he tells Nyheter24 and continues:
– There was a space in the field for the registration number, i.e. ABC 123 instead of ABC123. That space should not be there. But it is something that fraudsters can quickly fix in future attempts. Then the specified bank giro number was of course incorrect.
To avoid falling into the trap, Arnaud Matz therefore urges everyone to keep a special eye on the bank giro number on the traffic ticket.
– This case was much better executed than what we have seen before. This is precisely why it is very important to check which bank giro number you make your payment to, he says.
Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT
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