A Melbourne man has admitted stealing almost $290,000 from City of Melbourne parking meters in 2007 and 2008. He obtained the cash while working for a company contracted to collect the council’s parking revenue, National Protective Services.
Nine workers involved in the scam would immediately pocket small amounts of coins extracted from the meters, while larger takings would be put in bags and dropped in their own cars or collected by others.
The missing money, discovered following an audit of the collection system in October 2008, was spent on poker machines, cars, his daughter’s wedding, and luxury household items.
PCI strongly supports regular independent audits of parking operations, whether in off street or on street situations. Businesses which combine cash-based collection systems with strong manual intervention are always at risk of leakage resulting from fraudulent activities, unintentional errors and/or weak controls.