[stcredzero]

A friend of mine was scammed at a private pay lot. A parking thug was posing as the attendant and took his money. He comes back some time later and finds his pickup truck booted. The PITA thing about this, is that the private lot has no incentive to prevent this sort of scam, so long as it's not prevalent enough to scare people away from lots in general. In fact, there are parties involved who would benefit by encouraging this scam.

[jwhitney]

Not even a "scam" but definitely an example of moral hazard: I used to live next to a pub which had very little parking which was always full. Across the street was a large parking lot which mainly serviced a bank. Posted signs said that the parking lot was for "customers only" (of the bank) and indicated that violators could be towed. But of course, people driving by at night looking for parking to go to the pub would assume that since the bank was closed, there would be "no reason" for them to be enforcing this rule. Unfortunately, the tow company contracted to enforce it did have about a hundred good reasons. From what I could see they managed to catch a few people every single night. The pub knew it was a problem: they put signs inside the pub warning people not to leave their cars there. Obviously, they had probably had some pretty pissed-off designated drivers (or would-be drunk drivers) at 2 a.m. and having to cab it across town to collect their car.