HOUSTON — A Houston man said he's out $200 after being scammed by a city parking employee. That former city of Houston employee, Aisha Mercer, was arrested last week in what investigators are calling a bribery scheme. Officials said she was taking money from drivers to remove boots from ticketed cars.
Matteo Ghiotto said, in August, he paid to park downtown and put his ticket on the dashboard of his car. He thought he did everything right.
“I paid for parking and put a ticket in my windshield,” Ghiotto said. “I legally parked behind one of my employees."
When he returned a couple of hours later, there was a boot on one of his wheels and he said Mercer gave him two options: have his car towed or pay her cash.
“Parked behind me was a city of Houston vehicle with a city of Houston employee that had just put a boot on my car,” Ghiotto said.
Mercer told him it would cost hundreds of dollars to get the boot off. She also told Ghiotto that he had $600 in unpaid parking violations.
“She was telling me that I owed $600 in parking fees and I guess I believed her since it looked legitimate to me and I hadn’t been driving my car for, like, six months. I had loaned it to my girlfriend," Ghiotto said.
That's when he started to sense something was off.
“You know when you get a gut feeling that it might be a scam?” Ghiotto said. “She offered to do an unofficial settlement directly with her and she would unboot my vehicle.”
Ghiotto said it all happened fast but he took the easy way out. He paid Mercer $200 in cash to unboot his car and let him go.
“It was kind of one of those split decisions, like, man, I got things to do, I got places to go. I’ll just settle this and get out of it,” he said.
Three weeks after the incident, a detective called Ghiotto and told him he was scammed. The detective also told him that he wasn't the only victim.
Mercer appeared in court on Friday.
“We put our trust into people that work in a public capacity. They are representatives of us and they are representatives of people we elect and appoint. And when they betray that trust and they take money from hard-working Houstonians, it’s a very serious matter,” Harris County Assistant District Attorney George Lindsey said.
The ParkHouston website said that (typically) only vehicles that have three or more delinquent parking citations are eligible for booting. Also, it says that before a vehicle is booted, the city will mail drivers a notice.
Ghiotto said he has never had his car booted besides this one time and he still doesn't know if he ever had any tickets. He's not sure if he'll ever get his money back.
“If your gut instinct is telling you it’s a scam, believe it," Ghiotto said.
ParkHouston officials said they are fully cooperating with the investigation. Prosecutors are asking others who believe they could have been scammed in the same way to contact the Houston Police Department.