A dozen licensed New York City cabbies have been arrested, accused of charging hundreds of dollars on trips lasting less than a minute by hijacking customers' credit cards through the electronic payment system, authorities say.
The 12 taxi drivers, licensed by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, allegedly used customers' credit cards to make multiple transactions for high dollar amounts -- most of them lasting less than a minute, or no distance at all, and charging from $100 to $499 per trip, according to the city Department of Investigation.
The cabbies created the fraudulent transactions through the credit card vendors Creative Moble Technologies (CMT) and Verifone, two of the three major vendors responsible for electronic payments in taxis, according to the DOI.
Many of the cabbies switched their taxi meters to Rate 5 -- a Rate 5 fare is a negotiated fare outside the five boroughs -- and then put the stolen credit card information through the electronic payment system and paid for a fictitious trip, investigators say. The alleged fraud took place between January and July 2015.
The vendors alerted the city to the suspicious trips charged in the taxis, and DOI investigators contacted the credit card holders, finding early all of them weren't in New York City at the time of the transactions.
The cabbies have been charged with varying degrees of felony grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.
A 13th man arrested in the investigation was charged with impersonating his brother, a licensed TLC driver.
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The taxi drivers are expected to be arraigned in Queens Criminal Court. The TLC has suspended all of their licenses, and if the cabbies are convicted, their TLC licenses will be revoked.
The TLC declined to comment, deferring to DOI on the case.
