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Lawsuit alleges parking companies illegally accessed Coloradans' DMV records

Lawsuit alleges parking companies illegally accessed Coloradans' DMV records
Lawsuit alleges parking companies illegally accessed Coloradans' DMV records 03:39

Coloradans have been raising concerns about parking tickets from the company Parking Revenue Recovery Services showing up in their mailboxes for more than a year.

In November of 2023, we shared some of their concerns.

"I know people that, if they got a letter like that, they would just freeze, and they would panic," Gabriel Manzanero said.

"It's bullying, it's fear," Anna Peters told CBS News Colorado back in 2023.

"It reeks of pressure," Juan Maldonado added.

Now, how those tickets made it to their homes is the focus of a federal lawsuit.

It points to three companies -- LAZ Parking, PRRS, and Asura Technologies. Together, they provide 24-hour monitoring at parking lots across Colorado.

Using cameras, those companys scan license plates and can send tickets directly to violators -- or, in some cases, paying customers by mistake.

The lawsuit makes a new claim that those companies "are illegally obtaining drivers' personal information through their DMV records."

The complaint goes on to say that those companies are violating the Driver Privacy Protection Act, or DPPA, a federal law that restricts access to motor vehicle records and prohibits personal information such as names and addresses without the driver's written consent, with certain exceptions.

Parking enforcement, they argue, is not one of them.

Those we've spoken with have long questioned who shared their information.

We asked PRRS co-owner John Conway that question back in March and he told us then they are following DPPA and "our access is through state-authorized portals."

A spokesperson for Colorado's Department of Motor Vehicles also responded to our question about record access, saying parking enforcement companies can "subscribe to registration information via the state's bulk data vendor."

PRRS says the company cannot comment on pending litigation. LAZ Parking and Asura Technologies have not responded to a request for comment.

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