What if the restaurant guy was wrong and the guy parking cars was legit? Who pays 20 bucks for a 2 to maybe 5 buck service, imagine how much you would make parking cars at 20 bucks a pop, why would this scammer run a scam, he could make a fortune doing it right. And what was the scam, stealing the cars? Surely that wouldn’t last more than a day or two?
A lot of unknowns in this story, including, who will Melanie be dating now?
The scam is probably walking up to people parking in a free public parking spot and then telling them they need to pay to park there. Then he takes the money and walks off and spends it at the smoke shop.
The guy probably stole thousands and thousands of dollars over the years before his career as parking tycoon was brought to an end.