Calgarians getting texts warning them that they’ve received a parking infraction and are about to lose their driver’s licence need to think twice, says Calgary Parking.

The agency warned the public on April 8 that text messages received purporting to be from Calgary Parking related to tickets are fraudulent as they do not use text messages to notify drivers of parking infractions or payment requests.

The scam follows a common format used by fraudsters called smishing, which demands prompt payment under immediate threat of penalty.

Calgary Parking said they had received several dozen reports of the scam directly, along with several reports made over social media to the agency.

“We’re certainly attuned to and seeing these messages come out to having portrayed that it’s the city that’s lodging the fine was a great concern,” said Doug Morgan, the City of Calgary’s General Manager for Operations.

He said that the City of Calgary took quick action when they became aware of the latest scam and will be investigating through any avenues available to stop that latest fraud attempt.

The Calgary Police Service said that as of Tuesday afternoon, no Calgarians had reported being victimized by the scam attempt.

As of April 9, the website used by the scammers to attempt to defraud Calgarians had been taken offline.

A whois search, which provides information about domain names, showed that the domain referenced by Calgary Parking had been created on April 7, and had become inactive as of 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday—hours after Calgary Parking posted about the scam on social media.

A second similar domain name was attached to a scam using the same wording as the one discussed by Calgary Parking on April 8. That domain name was created on April 9, and pointed to a website that copied the official Calgary.ca website, albeit from 2022.

Users following through the website would have been directed to enter their credit card number and personal information details, after being told they had an parking amount that was randomly generated by the website, regardless of what information was entered.

Fraud attempts or victimization can be reported in two ways in Calgary: Individuals who have lost money or have had their personal information compromised by a fraud, they can call CPS at 403-266-1234.

For all other individuals who want to report a fraud attempt, that information can be reported to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/report-signalez-eng.htm.

Fictitious links and scams not new to Calgary

The Calgary Police Service had previously warned Calgarians of a similar scam in February.

In that scam, the service said that an individual was pressured to speak to a fictitious CPS detective, under immediate threat of losing their savings.

Among the advice given by CPS is to be suspicious of unsolicited texts or phone calls, and if in doubt, to not rush into providing payments.

The Canadian Center for Cyber Security has seven red flags for the public to be aware of, when they receive texts or emails and aren’t sure whether they are fraudulent or not:

• Fraudulent attempts use urgent or threatening language to pressure individuals to respond quickly
• Requests obtain demands for sensitive information
• Other attempts contain things that are too good to be true, including winnings from contests the recipient didn’t answer, or prizes they have to pay to receive
• Fraudulent attempts are unsolicited and contain unexpected information
• Information contained in attempts is inaccurate, such as web domain names that don’t match the real ones used by organizations, and spelling mistakes or grammar that a real organization wouldn’t miss
• Attempts may also contain suspicious files with strange or uncommon file types
• Fraudulent attempts can also look poorly designed, with blurry logos and unprofessional websites that do not look like the official website of an organization