Photo: Cincinnati Police Department
A man posing as a parking attendant managed to collect nearly $2,000 from fans heading to an FC Cincinnati game. The Cincinnati Police Department said that the unidentified man set up cones ahead of the July 9th game and directed cars into a parking lot that belonged to Freestore Foodbank.
While the food bank has been vacant for several months, it partnered with a local parking company to rent out the lot. When employees for Tri-State Parking arrived ahead of the game, they were shocked to find the lot was filled with cars.
They confronted the man, and he fled the scene.
"Basically, he set up fake cones and fake tickets and sold out the entire parking lot," Freestore Foodbank President and CEO Kurt Reiber told WXIX. "This was four or five hours before the game even started."
Reiber said the man was charging $40 per car and made nearly $2,000. Normally, Tri-State Parking charges $25 per car in the lot during game days. Reiber said that the money they would have earned from selling parking spaces could have fed around 5,000 children.
The Cincinnati Police Department is asking the public for help identifying the man, who is facing charges of grand theft.