Two New York taxi drivers were convicted in 2008 of swindling passengers by charging higher rates meant for out-of-town trips, but city officials failed to follow up with a broader investigation that might have revealed the scheme to be far more widespread.
The separate incidents, which occurred within weeks of each other in the spring of 2008, came nearly two years before the Taxi and Limousine Commission realized the true pervasiveness of the meter-fixing practice. The city revealed last week that about 3,000 cabbies had overcharged 1.8 million riders over two years, costing passengers a total of $8.3 million in illegal charges.
But officials at the taxi commission, which investigated the two cases in 2008, never thought to examine GPS data from other yellow cabs to see whether the fraud extended beyond the specific cases. “They didn’t raise a red flag,” said an official at the agency.
Although one of the drivers, Antoine Dauphin, had his cab license revoked, the action did not require a review by Matthew W. Daus, the taxi commissioner, as is mandated in certain cases. And officials only began examining GPS data from other cabs this year after a cabby from Brooklyn, Wasim Khalid Cheema, was found to have overcharged hundreds of passengers.
In each case, the drivers were determined to have switched their meters to a higher rate intended for trips into Nassau and Westchester Counties, despite still driving in the five boroughs.
Mr. Dauphin, a cabby, was described in court documents as “pushing buttons on the meter for over a minute” after picking up a passenger at Bleecker and Sullivan Streets on May 22, 2008. The fare for the three-mile trip to 49th Street and Park Avenue came to $23, an overcharge of $10. A judge found that Mr. Dauphin had intentionally switched the meter to an out-of-town rate, and stripped him of his hack license.
In a separate case from April 2008, a cabby named Mohammad Baig picked up a pair of riders who asked to make two stops. After reaching the first stop, Mr. Baig was found to turned on the higher rate, prompting the second passenger to complain and leave the cab in Midtown before reaching her Upper West Side destination. Mr. Baig was fined, but he continues to drive a cab in the city, officials said.
2 Comments
Just take away their medallions whenever they’re found to have done this. No wonder they protested having GPS in their cabs so vociferously!
— SKVIt should be easy to cross check the meter data with shift logs from the lease companies. Allow the drivers who overcharged a couple of times in total the benefit of having possibly made a mistake and revoke the licenses of ALL the rest.
— Simon