Towing Issues: Was my car towed illegally??, towing association, tow company

Question
Our car was towed from our Cousin's house in a condo complex with a HOA in Tucson, Arizona.  We parked the car right outside his front gate at around 8:15pm on as Sunday night, left the front gate open and left the house door open.  We walked inside to pick something up and walked out 10 MINUTES later (no joke) and found a tow company driving off with our car.  We asked to have him drop our car and he refused, we asked for the towing company number and he refused to give it to us.

SInce we had no idea that street parking was illegal here- we started looking for signs and found small (less than 1 ft x 1 ft) sign about 150 feet away on the wall- but this is the only visible sign from where we parked- and it wasn't visible to us at night.

The tow company wouldn't release our car that night, and the next morning they told us to meet them there with 200 dollars cash (they wouldn't take any other form of payment) and made us WAIT 3 hours to meet them (at 2pm) making my boyfriend miss 4 hours of work.

We feel this is a malicious tow and want to know if the tow company followed everything legally. We would like our money back and my boyfriends loss pay.  

Answer
My first question is who had the vehicle towed or who authorized it to be towed?
There is a towing association in Arizona that you can contact and motor vehicle towing advisory council you can contact. Most states require towing companies to accept credit cards, but so far I cannot find anything in Arizona that is a requirement.

The link for the association is  http://www.aptra.net/index.htm
They also have a link for all towing related laws in Arizona