Sophie refers to the "Parking Lot Scam"which is actually an urban legend born from an article in the Bristol (England) Evening Post. The article claimed that, for 25 years, a man posed as the parking lot attendant for the Bristol Zoo and was charging people for parking that was actually free with an estimated score equivalent to $7 million. The article, however, was a fictitious story run as part of an April Fool's Day section.
Erickson's passwords to his secret bank account are Boesky, Milken, and Steinbrenner. Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken were involved in a huge insider-trading scandal in the mid-1980s, and went to prison. George Steinbrenner was the owner of the New York Yankees, famous for his prodigious spending on ballplayers. He also plead guilty to charges of making an illegal campaign contribution to Richard Nixon (and a related charge of obstruction of justice), and was penalized by Major League Baseball for paying Howie Spira to dig up dirt on one of his players (Dave Winfield).
Towards the beginning of this episode, we see The Spiral Gallery through a car window which lets us know they filmed part of the episode in Estacada, OR.
Leverage begins with The Nigérian Job, in Chicago, IL. Matthew Lillard, who plays the mark in The Real Fake Car Job, Season 5, Episode 7 of Leverage, studied with Del Close and performed at The Improv Olympic in Chicago, in the early to mid-1990's.