An alley just blocks from Deep Ellum's Bomb Factory is tucked away from the main thoroughfare, but it’s had a national audience for years.

Flashy YouTube videos with upbeat background music give viewers a slice-of-life look at the alley, from parking scams and towing blitzes to bizarre photo shoots and risky bathroom breaks along Clover Street, between Commerce and Canton streets.

On a recent Saturday, for example, a man stood in the alley to help drivers park there in exchange for cash.

The drivers returned to the alley to find that their cars had been towed. The phony parking attendant was nowhere to be found. The drivers, who apparently ignored or disregarded all the "no parking" signs in the area, had been scammed.

“Bad Scam, Sad Fam, 6 Tows!” a YouTube video posted four days later was titled. More than 11,000 people have seen the video in the past two weeks.

The man behind the reality TV-like videos is no Hollywood producer. He’s an IT guy who started uploading videos to YouTube in 2008 to show his friends what goes on behind his business.

“My buddies seemed to enjoy them so I kept putting them up,” said Chris Gebhardt, who runs the IT business VIRTBIZ. "Now it seems they’re getting more clicks, and I just find it bizarre.”

Tips to avoid a tow

Dallas police Lt. Israel Herrera didn’t find out about Gebhardt’s YouTube account until last week, but parking scams are nothing new to him.

Dallas police Lieutenant Israel Herrera drives around Deep Ellum, near downtown Dallas, assessing the parking situation. (Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

Every so often, police will get a report of a scam artist who’s targeting drivers desperate to find a parking spot. Many times, the real parking lot attendants will turn the phonies in.

"They're opportunists, so they're looking for people who in this case look like they're lost," he said. "They park one car and there are two behind them thinking, OK, this is a place to park."

The 22-year police veteran wants people to know what to look for when they park in downtown Dallas and Deep Ellum:

Pay close attention to the signage, which will tell you all the rules to park.

The legitimate parking attendants are usually wearing a uniform and a name tag.

Some lots have a parking attendant at a booth during the day and machines to accept payments for nighttime parking.

Beware of people who aren't in uniform and flag you down, as though they're trying to help you park. This is how people tend to get scammed.

“If you’re in question whether you should pay them or pay the machine, pay the machine — or give us a call and we’ll sort it out for you,” Herrera said.

Giving police something to work with is a must, Herrera said, such as what the bogus parking attendants were wearing and where they were standing.

'Internet justice'

Parking in Deep Ellum has become an issue in recent years, especially with the opening of the Bomb Factory music venue in 2015.

Every now and then, a scam artist will set up shop at a parking lot or alley nearby.

Pete Zotos, who owns St. Pete's Dancing Marlin, once caught a phony parking attendant collecting $20 per car at a parking lot. The swindler was even wearing a yellow coat and waving a flag to look the part, Zotos said.

Zotos and one of his employees confronted the man and told him to hand over the $240 he'd collected, threatening to call the police. The scam artist handed them the money, and the pair waited in the lot for the car owners to return so they could return their money.

"It was awful," Zotos said. "What if we towed all their cars?

A makeshift sign warns patrons against parking along Clover Street in Deep Ellum. (Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

VIRTBIZ is open 24 hours a day and has a few spots along Clover Street for clients. Gebhardt says business owners in the area have done everything they can to make clear that not just anyone can park there.

One person spray painted "NO Parking" on a garage door. Signs in all caps, Spanish translations and different colors warn people that unauthorized cars will be towed, but people apparently ignore them.

Tow trucks frequent the area, looking for prey. It costs $150 to get a car back.

Chris Gebhardt is a business owner who creates YouTube videos based on "slice of life" scenarios that play out in his company's small lot. (Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

Gebhardt has broadcast Clover Street's shenanigans on YouTube for several years. In one of his first videos, a man who was angry about his car being towed took out his aggression by keying a VIRTBIZ employee's car.

The surveillance cameras captured the license plate number and helped police track him down, Gebhardt said. When police showed up at his house to talk to him, he denied everything.

Gebhardt uploaded a video to YouTube showing the man keying the car. The video included the man's name.

Six months later, the man contacted Gebhardt and asked that the video be removed because a potential employer Googled his name.

Gebhardt eventually took the video down after the man admitted what he'd done, apologized and paid for repairs.

"That's a hard lesson," Gebhardt said, "but I dunno — Internet justice."

Gebhardt's employees keep an eye on surveillance footage while they work and email him when they spot a scene he might be interested in. Each video takes about an hour to create, and Gebhardt's business management degree, with a concentration in broadcasting, comes in handy.

The videos get a lot of "rolling of eyes and shaking of heads" from Gebhardt's friends and family, but the YouTube channel now has nearly 3,600 subscribers — some of them die-hard fans who know what they like and what they don't.

"It blows me away that enough people find it interesting," Gebhardt said. "God forbid I change the music that the tow truck shows up in; they go nuts."

And if the incident is a crime, Gebhardt says he notifies police immediately — just like he did when his surveillance cameras captured the March 24 parking scam.

The victims included a couple and three young children who returned to the alley to find that their car had been towed.

"I really don't like this part," Gebhardt wrote in the chatter of his video. "We've notified the police. We wish this family well."

He said on Tuesday that as much as he enjoys creating his YouTube videos, he'd much rather not have a reason to make them at all.

"If people would just pay attention to the signs, then that would kill my video business," he said, "and I would be OK with that."

Dallas police are aware of the March 24 incident and said they are trying to identify the suspect. They haven't released any other details, saying they don't want to compromise their investigation.