A new fake ticket scam is rampant at the start of the year and many motorists are being fooled.
It’s a new fashion that confuses many motorists. False traffic ticket scams abound in several cities in France and it is sometimes difficult for the average person to know how to distinguish the fake from the real thing. After the falsified documents to report so-called prohibited parking, the criminals now draw up reports to notify speeding violations. Of course, these excesses of the authorized limit have never existed, but the copy is so similar to the official documents that some drivers fall into the trap and find themselves using their credit card for an offense that they do not have. clerk.
This is what has been happening since the beginning of January to many residents of the south of France. They receive a ticket in their mailbox asking them to pay a fine for speeding. On the document, very well done, appear their name and their license plate number with the amount to be paid. The recipients of these fraudulent letters, all domiciled in the Pyrénées-Orientales department according to the L’Indépendant website, in the municipalities of Saint-Hippolyte and Saleilles, are invited to scan a QR Code to pay their fine. Some fell into the trap, others spotted the subterfuge and contacted the police to report the scam.
In addition to the fact that the envelopes placed in the mailboxes were unmarked and not stamped – because they were distributed directly by hand by the bandits – it was the QR Code redirection site that put the clue to the problem. ear of several victims. Indeed, as always when it comes to “Quishing” – the name given to this technique for stealing bank details using falsified QR Codes – the two-dimensional barcode links to a fraudulent site. But here again, it is not easy for certain targets to detect the scam as the site on which they are asked to pay the fine is well established.
It actually looks like two drops of water to that of the National Agency for the Automated Processing of Offenses (ANTAI), the only one on which motorists can pay a fine for an offense other than parking. If in doubt, we strongly advise you to look for the real internet address of the ANTAI site before comparing it with that of the site to which the QR code redirected you. The local gendarmerie, which takes the matter seriously, has opened a procedure to find the authors of these false tickets which have already cost certain inhabitants of the Catalan country the loss of several dozen euros…
