Yesterday, we wrote about a Redditor who believes he stumbled upon a fake cabbie ripping people's credit cards off with a skimmer. It turns out other taxi drivers have noticed that fake cab as well—and one well-traveled driver says he's spotted around a half dozen of them in the last year.
"I think there are about 5 to 10 of these fake taxis driving around, all at varying levels of fakery," cabbie Noah Forman, who has been driving a yellow taxi for almost a decade, told us. He spotted the Redditor's cab back on July 7th, 2014, when that driver parked his car at a taxi relief stand on 27th Street near Madison Avenue.
"I told my friend about the fake cabbies, pointed out this car to him," Forman recounted about the run-in with the Redditor cab. "My friend is from an older generation, a generation where you don’t Tweet things, and just go up and say it to their face...my friend walks around the whole cab examining all of it’s faults, as he stops at the light at MacDougal. He goes, 'You’re a faker!! You’re a fake!!' and the driver responds, 'That’s right, and I get away with it all the time.' A big smile and he drives away."
Forman gave us his thoughts on how drivers are able to acquire the cars:
The real deal is that they may be licensed as taxicabs in smaller New York State towns such as New Rochelle, but indeed they have purchased an old New York City cab that is probably too old for New York City regulations. They are completely unlicensed by the city of New York. Which means they are stealing $1 million dollars, or whatever the current value is, for a City medallion, and also the driver hasn’t gone through any of the regulations for the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (T&LC).
Because the Taxicab operates completely illegally within the City limits, they can charge whatever they want on the meter, they can steal your credit card information, and the cab can be unsafe to drive. It bypasses all legal safety and criminal background checks.
A fake cab spotted on March 11th, 2015 in Long Island City
He added that this isn't only affecting yellow cabs: there are a handful of black cars that have regular license plates (all black cars, including Uber and Lyft ones, must have a T&LC license plate) and also pick up people for cash rides despite having no proper regulations met.
As for why it's so hard to stop these fake cabs, he pointed out that the only thing illegal about them is the pick-up: "anybody can operate a licensed and insured vehicle with a valid annual inspection...Our medallion taxicabs are inspected more critically, and they’re also inspected 3x a year. So they have to be caught in the act of picking someone up off the street."
A fake cab spotted on February 20th, 2015 at Broadway & 4th Street. "Picking up NYU rubes, as I told the woman standing in front of the cab not to get in."
Forman said he has contacted the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, T&LC, and the NYPD about the fake cabs in the photos throughout the post. He also offered some suggestions about how to spot a fake cab and avoid any scams—although it seems pretty obvious when you take a close look at the cabs, these are the kinds of things to keep in mind when you're drunk on a Saturday night trying to get from one borough to another:
- Standard plates for black cars have a long string of numbers and letters, which always begin with a T and end with a C for certification, unless it is a vanity license plate (e.g. “FARELL 34", or “MUSIC 22”) in which case it should still say T&LC in tiny letters at the bottom of the plate.
- Taxi plates should always match the medallion number, a number followed by a letter followed by two numbers (e.g. 2P27) almost always with a tiny letter at the end of the sequence as well. (Though there are exceptions, including the Stand By Vehicle, SBV, which is essentially a temporary cab used by large garages when they've run out of other taxis. Those cabs have SBV at the end of the license plate.)
- All medallion licensed yellow cabs will have a NY plate, and that plate will also say taxi in tiny letters at the bottom of the plate. (But this just means the taxi got certified somewhere in NY State, not necessarily in NYC)
- Don’t get in the yellow cab if its license plate reads something like "ATA - 679.” Don’t get in the yellow cab if its roof light says “TAXI” or “020201”—medallion numbers are always on the roof, and they're always number-letter-number-number. (Note: there are no o's, i's, or x's in medallions as well—but there are 1's.)
