As Tabitha Abed and her husband cleared customs at JFK Airport after 14 hours of travel from Kenya, the excitement of visiting New York City for the first time cut through their exhaustion.
But they quickly received a type of Big Apple welcome that authorities have been unable to stop for decades. A man approached the couple in the international arrivals area after they left baggage claim, posing as a cabbie, and offered to give them a ride to their hotel in Times Square.
Abed said the driver stopped a block away from their hotel, locked the car’s doors and demanded they settle up. Soon, they were out $800, which included a $180 “fee” to drive across the Queensboro Bridge, the couple said in an interview. The trip should have cost around $70 in a licensed yellow taxi.
“ We are scared to ask him because his voice, he was getting agitated,” Abed, 35, told Gothamist at her Midtown hotel a few days later. “He was very aggressive.”
Abed and her husband, Abed Mulee, 49, said they had enough cash on hand to pay the astronomical fare, but it cratered their budget for their trip. “ We were so frustrated,” said Abed. “At a point I told my husband, ‘Why don't we just cancel everything and go back?’”
Abed Mulee (left) and Tabitha Abed (right) said they fell victim to a taxi hustler at JFK Airport who charged them $800 for a ride to Times Square.
The man who ripped off Abed and her husband is known as a “hustler,” part of a scene of drivers who aren’t licensed by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission but broker illegal rides at the city’s major transportation hubs. The practice squeezes legal yellow cab drivers who are already losing money in an ailing industry now dominated by Uber and Lyft.
The Port Authority Police Department is responsible for cracking down on the schemers, but Gothamist observed dozens of the drivers operating in plain view at all of JFK’s terminals over several days this month. Airport workers, legal yellow cab drivers and even several hustlers interviewed by Gothamist said scammer activity has increased in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and estimated hundreds of hustlers prowl the terminals’ arrival areas.
“They used to tie them up and carry them away and take the car … before the pandemic,” said Michael Carey, a Port Authority customer service specialist. “After the pandemic is a free for all. It’s like a job now.”
Port Authority data shows the agency’s police force issued more than 2,400 summonses for illegal solicitation of rides at JFK Airport between January and November of last year, compared to just 1,400 summonses during the entirety of 2024.
An underground economy
In all of JFK’s terminals, a steady stream of tourists are forced to navigate a confusing transportation system that can be vexing to even native New Yorkers. Signs pointing to the JFK AirTrain or the yellow taxi stands are not always easy to find.
It’s at this point where hustlers prey on tourists who might look lost, and coax them into giving them rides that scam them out of hundreds of dollars. No driver in New York City, including those who are licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, is allowed to directly solicit cab fares.
“If someone is asking you if you need a ride, it's illegal,” said Taxi and Limousine Commission spokesperson Jason Kersten.
Port Authority worker Michael Carey is the guardian of the arrivals area of Terminal 1 at JFK.
Carey, who’s worked at JFK Airport for 19 years, isn’t law enforcement, but he serves as a sort of informal sheriff at Terminal 1, where he watches the hustlers like a hawk and tries to keep the tourists away from danger.
The day after the Kenyan couple paid $800 for their odyssey ride into Midtown, they returned to JFK, looking for someone who could help them. They found Carey, who told a group of hustlers he’d have them arrested if they didn’t return the money. Moments later, a driver emerged with a wad of cash.
“We felt served. We felt life back,” Abed said. “Mike is one of the best.”
Carey said he’s seen even worse price gouging by the hustlers, noting in 2022 an unlicensed driver charged a family $1,400 for a ride from the airport to New Jersey. Like Abed and her husband, the family came back to JFK looking for help, and Carey got the driver to return the cash.
Carey identified the hustler as Muhammed Kursheed, who still hustles illegal rides at the airport. Kursheed defended his line of work as his only way to make a living in New York City.
“I don’t want to be in the streets doing other bulls---, so I’d rather do this, make a bit of a living than selling drugs on the street,” said Kursheed. “ Who wants to do this s---? Nobody. Would you want to come here and ask a million people for a taxi? I don't wanna do this s---. But I got to pay rent. I got to pay my bills.”
Gurvinder Singh, who runs a legal TLC licensed black car service at the airport, said he interacts with hustlers every day. He said he argued with one hustler earlier this month, telling him he didn’t have a valid license to pick people up as they leave the airport.
Singh said that there are different kinds of hustlers: Some charge the rate of an Uber and pocket all the cash, while others draw more scrutiny from law enforcement by grossly overcharging tourists.
“There are so many hustlers who’s overcharging and there are so many drivers that charge the same as Uber price,” Singh said. “So the trouble, it’s when people charge $1,000 instead of $100.”
Yellow taxis are required to line up at an official dispatch line to score rides at New York City's airports.
The scheme circumvents regulations imposed on yellow cab and for-hire vehicle drivers, who’ve gone the legal route to drive people around the five boroughs. Many of those drivers say they’re getting hammered by costs to continue working, like hefty car insurance, financing, and an increase in the percentage of their fares going to apps like Uber and Lyft. Several licensed cabbies said the hustlers make it harder to get fares at the airport.
“There’s no control there,” said Singh Paramgit, a 20-year yellow cab veteran who was waiting in line to pick up passengers at Terminal 1. “This is bad for taxis.”
JFK Airport has remained a lifeline for yellow taxi drivers after Uber and Lyft flooded the city’s streets with new for-hire vehicles in the 2010s, all but ending medallion owners’ near-monopoly over the city’s cab industry. Taxi Workers Alliance Executive Director Bhairavi Desai said the hustlers undermine one of the last reliable sources of income for licensed taxi drivers.
“It has become more damaging for drivers as they have lost higher-paying trips in the rest of the city,” Desai said. “So every fare from the airport feels more essential for them.”
Enforcement is spotty
Officials at the Port Authority, which regulates the city’s airports, said they are well aware of the problem. Efforts to crack down on the hustlers date back to at least the 1980s, news reports show.
Terminal 4 at is another hot spot for taxi hustlers at JFK Airport.
“Taxi hustling is criminal. Not only are taxi hustlers unlicensed and uninsured, but they take advantage of travelers, stealing fares from hardworking, legally licensed taxi and for-hire-vehicle drivers,” Port Authority spokesperson Seth Stein wrote in a statement. “We are fully committed to protecting travelers from predatory ride solicitation. We are determined to intensify our enforcement efforts to drive these fraudsters out of our airports and out of business.”
But recent efforts have so far proven ineffective at pushing the scammers out of the terminals.
During several visits to JFK Airport this month, Gothamist found taxi hustlers were far more visible at the airport’s terminals than police officers. The Port Authority board last month moved to ramp up enforcement by approving $100 million in new funding for the agency’s “Operation Legal Ride,” an initiative that will expand the use of license plate readers, artificial intelligence-aided surveillance and analytics that can help police identify hustlers’ cars.
Landing at JFK Airport can be confusing for locals. For tourists, it's a dizzying ordeal.
The hustler activity persists at JFK Airport as the Port Authority awaits new leadership, with Director of New York state operations Kathryn Garcia awaiting confirmation as the agency’s next executive director.
At Terminal 8, Gothamist observed hoards of drivers running from the terminal entrance to their cars after a tow truck drove past a pickup lane looking to impound any vehicles without a TLC license.
The taxi hustler scheme isn’t exclusive to JFK. Illegal cab drivers also hunt for rides at LaGuardia, the Port Authority Bus Terminal and even popular department stores like Macy’s in Herald Square.
While the Port Authority Police continues to patrol and issue tickets to people soliciting illegal rides, cabbies and airport workers said enforcement doesn’t do much to deter illegal drivers.
According to New York’s vehicle and traffic laws, any person who tries to solicit customers for a ride outside the airport is subject to fines ranging from $750 at the first offense to up to $3,000 at the third and subsequent offense. Repeat offenders can face up to 90 days in prison.
But Carey and the hustlers who spoke to Gothamist said they don’t pay the fines and quickly return back to work, especially since they still carry a valid driver’s license.
In most cases, it’s up to travelers to sniff out the scam and decline rides from the hustlers.
Khalid Ahmed, a New Jersey resident who landed in JFK’s Terminal 4 earlier this month, was approached by a pair of hustlers after a long trip from Pakistan. But unlike many tourists, he knew how to avoid the scam.
Ahmed opted to take the train, declining the $250 fare one hustler offered to drive him to the Garden State.
“They’re probably going to charge the same amount, except they may switch the price later on,” he said. “Everybody’s trying to make money.”
