From the NY Post:In a mind-boggling ripoff that went undetected for years, thousands of city cabbies overcharged nearly 2 million passengers by at least $8.3 million, according to a shocking disclosure yesterday by the Taxi & Limousine Commission.
Officials said 35,558 of the city's 48,300 taxi drivers -- or three-quarters of all the licensees -- were caught overcharging at least once by secretly changing the meter's rate setting.
A staggering 3,000 drivers swindled passengers more than 100 times each. A total of 1.9 million trips were overpriced.
The scale of the thievery over the last 26 months was flabbergasting even to hardened veterans of what is supposed to be a tightly regulated industry.
...Wasim Khalid Cheema...lost his hack license earlier this month after authorities found he had cheated 574 passengers in just one month -- this past July -- by setting his meter to Rate Code 4, covering Westchester and Nassau counties, instead of Rate Code 1, the default setting for trips inside the five boroughs.
The suburban rate is double the in-city rate.
The remarkably simple scam netted Cheema an extra $40,000 over six months.
It came to light last year only after a suspicious passenger complained that a 12-minute trip from Manhattan to Queens cost $20.20, about double what she expected.
TLC officials then began comparing data from GPS devices in each cab with meter receipts and made the shocking discovery that the ripoffs were more rampant than anyone could have imagined.
Since GPS devices were only installed over the last couple of years, officials conceded that the wholesale rip-offs could date back years.
The official amount stolen came to $8,330,155 in 1,872,078 trips -- an average of $4.45 per trip.
But officials said they couldn't collect data from one of the three meter vendors that account for about 10 percent of the accounts, so the actual thefts were undoubtedly greater.
16 comments:
And on top of all that, you're expected to tip.
Yellow taxi cabs don't affect me they are rare in Queens. I can only expect available "cockaroach black cars" driven by short little men who on their best day speak Spanglish, probably have no insurance and drive unsafely.
So let's start there as to why this is my only choices. Oh, my other choice but in a shared manner is taking the Chinese vans that refuse me because I am not Chinese!
Great private choices here, nor of them safe or secure or legally enforced by the City.
"So let's start there as to why this is my only choices. Oh, my other choice but in a shared manner is taking the Chinese vans that refuse me because I am not Chinese!"
REALLY? wtf. You mean the shuttle vans that go from Flushing near Starbucks to Chinatown and back?
I hate to break it to you but when Cabbies were white back in the day they discriminated very openly.
The isssue is the overcharging of a cab ride that can cost 8 bucks to go six blocks, not the anger towards minorities who are willing to seek employment as a cab driver.
Can't we revoke the licenses and permits of the drivers and companies?
If the TLC has proof a cabbie cheated, they should yank their license. Let them be jobless like the rest of us. They only send money back to their homelands. All the foreigners love raping Americans. Enough already.
"The isssue is the overcharging of a cab ride that can cost 8 bucks to go six blocks, not the anger towards minorities who are willing to seek employment as a cab driver."
No, there definitely is an issue with the commuter vans/cabs. They operate in secrecy, TLC doesn't do anything about them, they ride on illegal routes and they won't pick up certain passengers because of their color.
This is much more of an issue in Queens than in Manhattan.
I will be requesting my reciept henceforth. I would also say that we should be rolling back the rate increases that we recently endured as punishment. Where was the TLC in all of this?
Where was the TLC? Maybe they were raking in the dough. I only use the yellow cabs when I leave the airport to go home.
Some cab drivers demand tips during the ride.
Yellow cabs are very rare in the outer boros. So most of us rely on small cab companies to get around or use van service.
If catching a cab in Manhattan, some drivers will refuse to take you to the outer boro. It's unfortunate that some passengers were cheated by this scam.
Yes, there is an issue of overcharging, but the majority of cab drivers are foreign and do love sticking it to the Americans. They think we're all rich and spoiled. My Pakastani friend told me this. Sorry, I'm sure there are lots of Americans out of work who would consider driving a cab, but can't afford the medallion. How can the foreigners afford a medallion? As for the Chinese vans. They've been around for a long time and won't pick you up unless you are Asian. The politicians won't touch this one, so the money that could go to the MTA goes into the pockets of the Asian vans. If the vans were run by an American, they would already been jailed and fined.
Use private car service. Don't use the yellow cabs. That will send them a message. Call the car service ahead of time and they will pick you up. You get door to door service and they'll quote you a rate over the phone when you give them your destination.
"How can the foreigners afford a medallion?"
No one person can "afford" a medallion. It takes a few people together to raise the money. You can run as many cabs as you want to off of one medallion. It's very rare that one person simply buys a medallion and goes to work for himself. Even then they usually have at least two people working around the clock just to make ends meet.
BTW - I'm not excusing the thefts reported in the article, just explaining how it works.
they got their loans from quasi-government lending ,similar to fannie mae and freddie mac with no assets or down payments and low interest payments.only for minorities.
Well, I'm a cab driver's daughter and I never take cabs--cannot afford it. Don't forget for those airport routes there's always the air train and the M60 bus, which riff-raff like me can afford.
No doubt this has cost many cab drivers money because once a passenger is burned he may assume that cabs are even more exorbitant than they are and boycott them going forward.
"they got their loans from quasi-government lending ,similar to fannie mae and freddie mac with no assets or down payments and low interest payments.only for minorities."
want to know what that is - do you have names of these programs? wonder if the SBA is handing out loans to "minorities" (but not Americans) to buy a taxi cab medallion.
Now we see why they objected so vehemently to those GPS and credit card devices.
Nothing like the woikin' man to screw ya.
In Jersey they just run the meters fast.
As in pretty much all walks of life, a nominal percentage of crooks, and everybody else gets shat upon--drivers and passengers alike. Once one wades past the usual misinformation, ignorance and anti-furriner sentiment, you crunch the numbers and discover that--at their most scandalously interpeted--they suggest the average driver is "ripping people off" about one fare every six weeks.
Which would mean about a whopping extra $100 a year.
Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the TLC's institutional omerta towards drivers, or the 2 minutes or so of "training" one gets on the fly when dealing with the new meters.
As to recent fare hikes,there has only been one full fare hike in the past fourteen years, accompanied by the standard increase of leasing fees. Factor in the confiscation of 5% from drivers on every credit card transaction, the MTA-bound (ha!) 50-cent surcharge of last fall which almost always comes out of the tip, and the hike in gas costs during the past decade, and drivers are making less per customer in straight dollars and cents than 14 years ago. To compare, during that time, rent stabilized housing alone has gone up 50%.
Ship 'em all back--that'll learn 'em!
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