You want to be an American?
Want to here, seven hundred dollars you parked illegal?
You pay? And guess what just got rob.
We have a parking scam going on in America right now. On that is Attorney Carry Lutz, who's investigator also wrote a book about it.
Carry, how are you doing great? And appreciate you helping to get the word out on this. It is a multi billion dollar scam that they soak us for five, ten fifty dollars at a time. You don't even realize that you're being taken. Many of the signs throughout the country, signs that say scam here to pay aren't legal. They aren't legal. They can't be writing tickets based on these signs.
Signs in America street signs are strictly governed by the MUTCD, the law that you have been living by your whole life. You never even heard about it. It's the manual on uniform and emphasize uniform traffic control devices. Just substitute signs for traffic control devices. A sign is a traffic control device if and only if it conforms to federal standards. Every state has adopted this law and they can't write a ticket yet. They do every single day of the week.
If the sign doesn't conform, and you all know the signs you've seen that.
You just assume because say they have QR codes on them. Now, so carry out illegal As far as Cincinnati goes, we know cities across the country they've they've kind of privatized parking enforcement to tech companies basically, and you mentioned the signage clear sign is lawful noticeers app based contractors, but they also harvest your data. There's the penalty systemic will confuse rather than form, So it's kind of like this
constitutional grazon. Now, I will say that Cincinnati has not yet fully outsourced our parking enforcement the way places like well Chicago or Pittsburgh have. So we hit the cubs and we hit the bucks.
So there you go.
Is run by the Parking Division of Cincinnati. Now they push the pay by Phone app, but that's a private third party platform that's operating a bunch of cities. And they also have the Sinsey Easy Park app for ebeit payment, which I use. But drivers he are still interact with private apps to pay meters. It's not as bad as other cities, but it feels like a slippery slop like it might be heading that.
Way, it's getting there. When a city adopts an app, they find that their revenues from parking, both fees and violations go up forty to one hundred and sixty percent just from the app. And one other thing about the app. You know, and I know there are millions of miners driving the nation's highways. They get their licenses, some as early as fifteen. I think in a least of fourteen and up to seventeen. You're a minor. You can't enter into contracts. That's why a bank will not loan a
child money. And uh, the when you actually download the app and click I accept, you are saying I waive my right to trial by jury, I wave my right to enter into a class action. I consent to have my data shared with God knows how many different partners that these apps are. I mean, it's a question of who don't they share your data with park Mobile. You can sent to have your data stored in foreign countries. And for miners, they're getting the geolocation, the exact location
of a miner when they pay for the parking. And this is is just unconscionable. It's unacceptable. They endanger miners potentially, but they shouldn't be entering into contract and many states are passing laws requiring parental consent before the miner is allowed to even utilize an app or a game on
the platform. I've written takedown notices to Google App Store and Apple App Store saying this thing is rated for four years and up, which means anybody can use it, and yet you're you're allowing miners to consent to sharing data. It's illegal, out and out. I've also sent complaints to the FTC, the Florida Attorney General, the Texas Attorney General, a number of others, the SEC because they're issuing bonds backed by parking revenues that are illegally illegal revenue streams.
So when you said the signs themselves are are legal, like the QR code on the signs? First of all, are those ones that are on public streets. What about parking lots or city owned parking lots and you mentioned they can't write a citation for that.
Why isn't okay? So when you have a city owned lot or a private parking facility, different rules apply. But even the city owned lot really needs to comply to some extent with the federal guidelines, but on street parking that's what we're talking about here. But if a parking lot connects to a street and part of it is a private road, effectively, then the standards apply. The point is they should be using those standards for any government
owned parking facilities anywhere. I mean, for instance, the sign is supposed to be seven feet high. I wish I had a dollar for every sign that was six and a half or five feet high. It's supposed to face oncoming traffic. How many signs have you seen that are mounted parallel to the street. Unacceptable because the whole point of it is uniformity, so that if you're in Alaska or you're in Key West, you can get on the highway, you can see a sign. You don't have to think
about it, you know exactly what it means. Also to stop somebody from say Portlandia or Seattle, they decide that they don't like the system and they want stop signs to be green and instead of red, and they want people to stop on green lights and go on red lights.
Does that technical evy to gate the law? The enforcement law?
Absolutely, because if the sign's defective, that is your due process, your notice of the law. You can't be expected to know a law if you haven't gotten notice to obey a law. And so in anything that comes from that, if the sign is illegal, got the tickets, they're llegal, all right.
Cincinnati uses we have the Cincinnati Easy Park app. But also there's pay by Phone, which is a third party app and it's in well over a thousand cities. Well, who owns the data collected when a Cincinnati driver or a suburban driver, out of time driver goes in parks in Cincinnati use that app?
What can I do with it? That's a great question. Now, really effectively, this is a big tech solution for a simple problem. So pretty much the app owns the data. This city might be able to obtain the data or certain portions of it, but the app owns the data. They own your data. And look in the we remember Obamacare. They said, if you don't get health insurance, then we're going to find you. And the Supreme Court said that's okay,
because you do have a choice. But for instance, in the Town upon Beach, the President's home away from DC, the winter White House in that town, they have done away with all other forms of payment. So in other words, if you want to park in Palm Beach, you have to use the app, and that therefore they're forcing you into a private contract. And that's what all of them are doing. They all want you to use the app because they don't want to collect meters, they don't want
pay stations. They want you to use the app, and they force you into a private contract. That's called coerced contracting compulsory contracting. And then it's with a third party, so you have to pay to pay to park because they charge you a convenience fee. I don't know who it's convenient for, whether it's for them or for you. But look, it's all on live site parkscam dot com. The book is there, and I think you know, it's
been allowed to fester for too long. Originally, parking meters served a valid purpose, and that was they didn't want people parking in front of merchants all day long.
They went to squat and there basically get treated like a parking lot because they want to They want to turn traffic over so people can't spend money. Start sure, and it's now it's turned to well, I think I think Chicago is a great example they've knew this for a long long time, and that's considered by many people the disaster. But uh, that is like how it gets sold to councils. And you know, we're always looking for money,
right the city of Cincinnati, we need money. We sold our railroad so we could fix the roads here that have been ill repaired for twenty plus years. This feels like something they go, wow, okay, well can we make some money off this thing? Much money, much like Ohio did before they passed long these law which which outlawed these speed cameras, and so you know, you'd go through
a Yeah, you get this ticket in the mail. I didn't even know alw was driving the car, and you know, we're paying these exorbitant fees and you couldn't fight it because there's some odd of state po box and that got struck down in Ohio smartly enough. This sounds like it's like the next incarnation of that.
I'm hoping it will be. I've sued the six municipalities. I sued three parking apps in the US District Court in South Florida, and they're going to have to account for it. I've also put in some complaints to the Florida Department of Transportation, they've been very upset about street art that it's not a traffic control device, it's illegal, and it's issued an opinion said all illegal traffic control devices need to be immediately removed because they're a danger
to the road. And yet these parking signs are abundant and the towns the cities view them as free money. But in the end they really injure merchants. Downtowns were ruined by parking, and that's why people started going to malls. And the more they this is just an extra active system. They provide you no value, all right, no value whatsoever for parking. It's we own the curves, right, the public owns the streets, so they're charging you. You know, I
get the fact you need turnover. You don't want somebody hogging all the all the retail, right, yeah, yeah, exactly. And private parking that's a private matter between you and the owner of the garage. But when they use an app, and you can't even park in the facility unless you use the app, all right, so you have a choice, so I won't park there. But for children getting their data shared, and basically the app is a data harvesting tool.
Would you believe that the app actually creates or has the ability to create a behavioral profile of the user. They know when you go to work, they know whenever you park, and then that picks up patterns and then they market to you these app companies. I get monthly emails from park Mobile saying join the private park Mobile Club and you two can you know? It does the thing that every app should do, which is, if you're
running late, you should have the ability to automatically extend time. Well, their private club app does that, and they don't charge convenience fees, but they're regular app that the general public downloads doesn't automatically spend time. So if they could do it for the people paying, why can't they do it for the people who are who are just there casually.
Carry lots at parkscam dot com and not bad yet. Here in Cincinnati, we're talking about the pay by phone app. Since the easy park is meter payment here in the city has that and everything's enforced by the Parking Division BUD.
The pay by phone is being used in some lots in other areas, and it's kind of like Mission Creep, and the idea here is you're forced to enter a third party contract outside the scope of Cincinnati, much like we did with speed cameras, where even if you follow the signs and think you parked legally, you can still get a ticket. How does that actually happen though it sign says I can park here at park, I pay, and I still get a ticket. What's going on?
Well, you think the sign says that, and a lot of tickets are actually thrown out when people take the time, when you take the time to actually challenge them and the parking enforcement officer what we used to affectionately called meter maids. They don't know the law generally any better than you do. All they do is scan your plate. The thing says violation, create ticket, and that's what they do.
It's more and more an automated process. They even have cameras that clock you when you come in and then when you leave, and if you stay two minutes over you get a violation. So all of it is just it's just gotten to the point where it's just totally extracted. It just provides no value and it needs to stop.
You mentioned that there's like a constancial gray zone that no regular or wants to claim jurisdiction at the federal state are here in sincinnat the local level. So how does that? What's the gray zone? And who should be mine in the store? Why aren't they?
Well, it's every So the NUTCD that's the Bible of the road. It's twelve hundred thick pages of every sign, speed limits, of traffic lights, you name it, markings on curbs, et cetera. And in it every state has had to adopt it. They passed laws generally, and so basically in Florida, the Florida Department of Exportation is responsible to see that this thing is carried out and they have the ability as well as the Feds, to say, you're not complying
with the manual, you're losing highway funds. And that's what Florida is doing with the street art, getting the cities to remove the street art, saying this is a traffic control device and it doesn't comply and you're losing your money. And it's millions of dollars a city like Fort Lauderdale. So every every state has the ability to actually implement this and force these cities to comply with the law.
Yeah, but they're making money off it. That's the whole driver, this thing which asks the begs the question. More and more cities each day must be privatizing the parking apps and things like that because they're making money.
Right. Oh, of course, there is an area in a city here called Riviera Beach, Singer Island, very plush, and they implemented a parking system in a lot that forever had been free, and the prices are outrageous. This is what started me off on the whole thing. And they figured they could bring in a couple million dollars a year. Well, except they privatized the entire system where city employees don't
even write the tickets. It's the private employees write the ticket and they and then the judge, jury and executioner. They actually they actually there's an ammunication portal and you basically if you want to challenge the ticket, you go to this site and then you have to struggle to find the link that says challenge this ticket, and then they decide whether or not you have a valid plane, and then they want to charge you for an arbitrator if you don't agree with their decision.
But it sounds like it sounds almost exactly like the speed camera thing.
We had here.
It's a profit center. It's not about public right away and enforcement. He's carry Lutz for more on this. It's parkscam dot com, America's great parking scam, parkscam dot com, carry lots. Thanks for the time, appreciate it anytime.
Thank you for having me on.
Yeah, the interesting part. But again, you know, Cincinnat, we're not yet fully outsourcing this. We do have the since the easy park app, which I think as far as I can tell someone about the city, but they do push the pay by phone app, which is a private, third party platform like Carry's talking about here. So it's a mission creep for Warners Forum especially. I mean, you're going to a Reds game in Pittsburgh or Chicago or
other cities, they have this there, so just FYI. Scott's Loan Show seven hundred