The Bristol Zoo parking attendant swindler story

A story about a man who posed as a parking attendant for 25 years at Bristol Zoo only to disappear one day is spreading across social media.

The story claims the parking attendant simply failed to turn up for work one day, despite previously never missing a day. And it is at this point that fascinating story begins to unfold… see the example below…

Outside Bristol Zoo there is a carpark for 150 cars and 8 buses. For 25 years, it’s parking fees were managed by a very pleasant attendant. The fees were £1.40 for cars and £7 for buses.
Then, one day, after 25 solid years of never missing a day of work, he just didn’t show up; so the Zoo Management called the City Council and asked it to send them another parking agent.
The Council did some research and replied that the carpark was the Zoo’s own responsibility.
The Zoo advised the Council that the attendant was a City employee.
The City Council responded that the carpark attendant had never been on the City payroll.
Meanwhile, sitting in his villa somewhere on the coast of Spain or France or Italy … is a man who’d apparently had a ticket machine installed completely on his own and then had simply begun to show up every day, commencing to collect and keep the parking fees, estimated at about £560 per day — for 25 years.
Assuming 7 days a week, this amounts to just over 5 million pounds … and no one even knows his name.

It seems like the ultimate con. A man turns up for work as a parking attendant for Bristol Zoo for 25 years, never missing a day’s work. Only he’s not a parking attendant. He simply keeps all of the parking fees he collects. Bristol Zoo assume the parking attendant is employed by the City Council. The Council assumed the Zoo hired their own parking staff.

And after 25 years of service, the phantom parking attendant disappears into the sunset, with an estimated £5 million in parking fees.

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Many similar versions of the rumour has spread over the years, and most of them target Bristol Zoo, but with differing prices attached for the parking costs of different vehicles.

It’s a fascinating tale, but not one shred of truth behind it. The story has been spreading since 2009 but can be traced back even further. In fact it started its life as a chain email before finding itself being passed between people on social media.

Bristol Zoo – and their real parking attendants – are more than familiar with this tale, after being asked about it for many years now. They have on numerous occasions dispelled the rumour, as well as insisting that there has never been any confusion over who is responsible for manning the car parking around the zoo gardens. They even have a copy of the Bristol Evening Post article that debunks the tale on their own website.

In reality the zoo gardens has many different car parks, and they are manned by multiple attendants, so the claim that one attendant who managed to turn up every day without anyone noticing he wasn’t actually supposed to be working there would not be feasible.