Taxi dispatchers who allegedly permitted some drivers to jump ahead in line at JFK International Airport in exchange for cash were arrested last week, the Queens district attorney said. Photo courtesy Wikimedia/Sergio Calleja
Sixteen airport taxi dispatchers were busted last week for allegedly landing bribes to let drivers skip holding area waiting lines at JFK International Airport and instead go directly to terminals to make passenger pick-ups, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.
“The defendants are alleged to have accepted bribes in the form of cash payments to rig the airport taxi dispatching system…” Brown said in a prepared statement. “The bribery scam allegedly allowed taxi drivers to basically ‘cut the line’ and get ahead of honest driers waiting their turn for passengers.
“Though the alleged bribes paid each time amounted to only a few dollars, on busy days, thousands of cabs pass through JFK’s terminals during an eight-hour shift – giving a dishonest dispatcher the opportunity to illegally make hundreds of dollars on a daily basis,” Brown continued.
The 16 accused individuals – including five from Jamaica, one from Far Rockaway, one from Bayside, and the rest from Brooklyn – were part of a dispatch system that regulates the movement of taxis from a central holding area to the pick-up spot at the terminals. The average wait in the holding area is approximately two to three hours, after which the taxis are summoned as needed for incoming flights to the terminal pick-up in the order that they arrived. Upon exiting the holding lot, each driver is issued a “dispatch ticket,” on which is printed the taxi’s medallion number, as well as the date and time of their exiting the holding area.
Additionally, when a dispatcher gives a medallion taxi driver a so-called local fare – meaning a customer who is going to a destination near JFK, such as Brooklyn or Queens, the driver is given a “shorty ticket,” which permits them to bypass the central holding area and go directly to a terminal for the next fare. Drivers are not allowed to pay for such tickets, and dispatchers are not permitted to sell them.
According to officials, the dispatchers also allegedly handed out the shorty tickets to drivers who, instead of heading for Queens or Brooklyn were going to the more lucrative Manhattan, in exchange for cash.
The alleged dispatcher scheme was uncovered in December 2012, when the Port Authority’s Inspector General’s Office received an anonymous tip about it, the DA said.
