Free-Parking Loophole Cost Aspen $800,000 Over Four Years
ASPEN, Colo. (CBS4) - The city of Aspen lost more than $800,000 in revenue due to a free-parking scheme that went unnoticed for four years.
More than 80 self-pay parking kiosks around downtown Aspen accept pre-paid debit cards, but cards with no money on them also issued parking vouchers.
It's unclear how many people knew about the tech loophole, the police department said.
"It's large numbers," Blair Weyer with the Aspen police said. "It seems like it was wide-spread usage."
Officials said it wasn't easy to spot the scam because they were making so much money off parking.
Aside from the police, who opened a criminal investigation this week, no city officials would speak about the scam.
"It could potentially be a felony," Weyer said. "Any type of credit card fraud is considered a felony, but we're also looking at it as a theft."
Police said it will be hard to track the prepaid cards and that the investigation will take time.
"It will be challenging because a lot of what was used are prepaid debit cards," Weyer said. "So it's definitely going to be interesting when we get that bulk data from the company to see what kind of trends are there."
Critics said the town is losing out on even more money. This week the town council agreed to pay $600,000 to replace all 81 pay stations from a new company. Those will be installed in November.
