Hochul And Adams Launch Task Force Cracking Down on ‘Ghost Cars’

(New York Daily News/TNS) — City and state authorities have launched a sprawling interagency task force to combat so-called ghost cars carrying missing, modified or counterfeit license plates, Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul said Tuesday.

An initial operation against ghost cars by the task force on Monday netted 73 car seizures and 282 summons and led to eight arrests, according to authorities.

Ghost cars have been a growing problem in the post-COVID years, and the New York City Police Department has at times been accused of not staging a sufficient effort to take them off the streets.

Adams characterized the ghost autos as menaces to city streets. He said some criminals carry several sets of license plates in their vehicles.

“This initiative is a proactive way of catching them before they do something dangerous,” Adams said at a news conference on Randalls Island.

The interagency effort could give officials more tools to fight the challenge — and to reap money lost when the ghost cars pass through tolls undetected.

The far-reaching enforcement action on Monday spanned a battery of agencies — the city Police Department, the city Sheriff’s Office, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the State Police, the state Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — according to Hochul’s office.

License plate coverings and fake or fraudulent plates led to more than $46 million in lost toll revenue for the MTA in 2022, according to a fare evasion report published by the agency last year.

And in December, 44 cars — linked to nearly $1 million in unpaid tolls and fines — were impounded in a toll enforcement blitz on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, according to officials.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said it logged a 14% overall increase in revenue recovery from toll evaders in 2023 compared with the previous year.