On the up: Passengers were routinely overcharged for their taxi rides Tourists in the Big Apple could have had a big bite of their holiday budget unlawfully taken after it was revealed up to 1.8million passengers in New York have been overcharged for their taxi fares.
The reputation of the yellow and black checkered cabs, one of the most famous symbols of the city, has been severely tarnished by the claims that over 35,000 taxi drivers altered their meters to charge passengers higher rates for trips.
According to officials, drivers flipped switches on the meters which allowed them to charge double fares which should only be used for trips outside the city centre.
Official fare rules state that New York taxi drivers are only allowed to charge a higher rate when they take long-distance fares, typically those which cross the border of New York city itself.
Though most New York cab drivers were found to have only used the wrong fare once, an investigation by the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission found that over 3,000 drivers had used the wrong fare code over 100 times in the last two years.
The scandal only came to light when Brooklyn cab driver Wasin Khalid Cheema was found to have overcharged passengers over 574 times in only one month.
Cheema, who has had his taxi licence subsequently revoked, was caught after New York resident Mitchell Lee, an anaesthesiologist at the NYU medical centre, noticed that his fare was $2 (Around £1.30) higher than normal.
Dr Lee was initially charged $7 for a $5 fare. When challenged Cheema claimed that the fare was the same as normal before eventually asking Lee to pay his normal $5 fare. Dr Lee's complaint to the TLC exposed the scam involving 35,558 of New York's 48,300 cab drivers.
Dr Lee told the New York Post: “It was obvious when the meter was going fast. I asked the driver why the meter was going faster than normal, if there was breakage.”
After an investigation, the commission found that an average of $4.45 had been added to the fares of 1.8millon taxi rides since 2008, which netted cabbies an estimated $8.3millon in income. Cheema is expected to have pocketed an extra $40,000 in only six months and was found to have been caught overcharging passengers on previous occasions.
Drivers who violate TLC rules can expect anything from a $200 fine to the withdrawal of their cab licence, however despite thousands of complaints less than 100 taxi drivers have lost their licences in the past five years.
