Wasim Khalid Cheema may have masterminded the largest rip-off in TLC history
A crooked cabbie stole an estimated $40,000 by overcharging passengers in what appears to be the city’s biggest rider rip-off ever, authorities said Monday.
Wasim Khalid Cheema manipulated the meter in his yellow cab to inflate fares paid by unsuspecting passengers, authorities said.
A Taxi and Limousine Commission review of trip data concluded Cheema ripped off 574 riders in a single month, officials said.
Officials are still trying to determine the full scope of Cheema’s alleged thievery, which an administrative law judge called “reprehensible.”
“Members of the riding public must be able to trust that taxicab drivers will not only transport them safely, but they will be honest in their dealings with them,” Law Judge Alessandra Zorgniotti wrote in a decision concluding Cheema repeatedly pilfered from passengers.
Cheema, 22, of Brooklyn, skipped a January hearing and couldn’t be reached Monday.
TLC officials said they were unaware of any other cabbie ripping off so many passengers.
Asked if Cheema could face criminal prosecution a TLC spokesman called it “an active case” and said no further details were available.
Cabbies manually select the appropriate rate of fare by pushing a button on the meter – choosing from rates for trips within the city, trips to Newark and Kennedy airports, and for jaunts across the Nassau and Westchester borders.
Cheema switched to the out-of-city rate on trips that stayed within city limits, according to the judge’s decision.
A TLC analysis of six months of trip data estimates Cheema stole about $40,000 during that stretch.
Officials couldn’t say when Cheema, a cabbie since May 2007, started inflating fares.
A suspicious passenger complained about the meter in Cheema’s cab increasing “very rapidly” during a July trip from Manhattan to Woodside, Queens, according to the decision. That prompted the TLC investigation.
TLC officials said new technology required for cabs, including GPS, enabled the authority to develop a case against Cheema. The agency has moved to yank his hack license.
{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
Johnny Cab 03.01.10 at 7:23 pm
Dispatchers rip off drivers with crooked tips for over 100,000k per year. Why does that not make headline news?
bctw 03.01.10 at 7:30 pm
“Cheema, 22, of Brooklyn, skipped a January hearing and couldn’t be reached Monday.” That’s because he took his earnings back to whatever terrorist training ground he came from. Way to go, T&LC! The funny thing is I bet this terrorist never stopped for black folks like me. It’s always the black and brown cabbies who hate black and brown fares the most. I wish this guy a violent death.
winky 03.01.10 at 8:25 pm
Nice!!!!
Charles T 03.01.10 at 9:10 pm
To Johnny Cab. If a fleet rental garage has 100 cabs to rent and charges between $5 to $15 get a cab, say $10, those are crooked tips of $1,000 a day, $1,000 a day is $365,000 a year. Some garages rent 200 cabs. Doesn’t the Murstein garage have 250 medallions, did I hear that somewhere. Fleet rental garage dispatchers have been getting away with that for decades.
NYCabbie 03.01.10 at 10:25 pm
This is very sad, I always tell passengers how honest majority of drivers are, one bad fish can spoil the whole pond, this news will be over every where.Worst thing is he belong to the same place I’m from and we share same clan also.
@bctw your comment is self explanatory, why your black a** don’t get picked up, I have never ever refused any passenger based on color, but anytime I picked up your “Gangsta” kind I regret it later.
NYCabbie 03.01.10 at 10:28 pm
to all cabbies, if dispatchers at garages rip you off on tips it still does not give you any reason to rip off passengers, In my view tips to dispatchers and to the doormen were initiated by desperate cabbies not the otherway around.
mohammed salim 03.01.10 at 10:51 pm
he is a dummy! he pushed rate 4,,it show on receipt,,how long he think he can do. all passengers are not dummys
Irving 03.01.10 at 11:01 pm
send him to jail throw away the key!
aamir 03.02.10 at 1:08 am
First of all, He is the best driver in my point of view because he got balls.He is not like other cab drivers to scard of revokation of his Hack. We cab driver should be United and rip every passanger on earth. In New York, cabies are rip off by Traffic Lawyars, Policeman, Doorman,even f…ing passanger. (( He is the best driver to send money to al qaida……… live long Mr.Cheema you are not the only one in America who rip off people, In american politions, policeman, bussnismen, and chruch’s fathers all are very honest. F for passengers
a caby 03.02.10 at 2:28 am
TLC officials say that Mr. Cheema stole $40,000 dollars in six month period. If that is the case, and he started driving a yellw cab since May 2007, the total amount of money he stole reaches to nearly $200,000 !!!
Hura Cheema. I bet with that kind of a money you fucked the best blond pussies in New York and elsewhere and now, having oppened a store in Pakistan, you are laughing all the way at that stupid TLC Judge called Alessandra Zorgniotti.
Anonymous 03.02.10 at 5:44 pm
Bad Boy is Mr. Cheema.. Jajajaja……. It is all the same
Milton 03.02.10 at 9:47 pm
Drivers able to use ‘out-of-town’ rate in Manhattan, or in the 5 borough? State-of-Art GPS gives the opportunity for the crooked cabbie to make some extra money??? The rest of the cabbies is just struggling to get liveable wages!
Charles T 03.03.10 at 4:47 am
To NYCabbie. Are you a cabbie, OR a doorman OR a cab dispatcher, OR TLC member? You are a master at blaming the victims, cabbies. This is like asking the TLC why they don’t go after known corruption in the cab business, REPORTED FOR YEARS, and the only answer the TLC can come up with is “cabbie, you didn’t report it correctly, or to the right person,” or some other lame excuse. The blame game: Saying it is the cabbie’s own fault for years on end, for taxi business corruption and victimization of cabbies. Cabbies do the work, surprisingly it is the rest of the taxi business that is vain-glorious, and Rich as Croesus. It seems all the charlatans in the cab business are important and RICH, but not the ones who do the work, the cabbies. There are too many vain-glorious fingers in the pie deciding what one man is going to do in one cab, taking passengers from point A to point B. These vain-glorious fingers have transformed the working cab and the cabbie into circus performers, yet, these vain-glorious charlatans do not drive a cab, they just know everything. If they can’t think of another vain-glorious trick, well just over-inspect every cab and cabbie to death. Finally, these vain-glorious charlatans came up with a meter that is a circus performance, yet they are neither a cabbie nor rider, just someone who stumbled on power, money, and worker bees to torture.
Charles T 03.03.10 at 4:53 am
Talking to an out-of-town cabbie the other day, he says cabbies in his town are regulated by some guy with a degree from a college basically known for its cooking school and noted for teaching learning disabled and developmentally delayed! We had a good chuckle over that. Suddenly he is the taxi wizard. At last, a place for him to become important and dreaming up edicts every day.
NYCabbie 03.03.10 at 5:23 am
@Charles T, Yes I’m a cabbie and still defend what I have said, tips to dispatchers at garages is drivers fault, not dispatchers.
Garages have to lend their cars to make money, all cabbies need to decide not to tip the dispatcher, will they send every one home in that situation? NO WAY.
Samewith the doormen, they need you, don’t tip them, if a doorman doesn’t give you any job, he might have to stand hailing for cab may be for 10-15 minutes 4-O-clock in the morining, why do cabbie bribe him at first place.
Yes indeed there are injustices in the system, but it doesn’t mean cabbies should start ripping off the passengers. Injustice does not justify an act of another injustice.
Anonymous 03.03.10 at 8:29 am
In my point of view..he was just plain stupid..how long he thought he can get away with it. Loser
Charles T 03.03.10 at 9:55 pm
No one ever said that having to pay tips to fleet garage dispatchers was any excuse at all to “cheat” passengers. No passengers should be cheated, they should be given discounts if anything. Shut the meter off and don’t charge them those last 2 red lights jammed with traffic. Make the customer happy. Say, I’m shutting the meter off, I can’t in good conscience charge you to sit in this terrible traffic.
Anonymous 03.03.10 at 9:55 pm
group rides will expand to Penn station and the Port authority with flat rates and then it is chaos
Charles T 03.03.10 at 10:17 pm
To Anonymous. Is that your idea or you actually heard it is planned, Penn Station and Port Authority group rides? Maybe they are taking their ideas from Bermuda, where NYC will run shuttles and keep the advertising money for themselves. So I advise no cabbies to say they “don’t want to do it.” Although in Bermuda, it wasn’t that cabbies didn’t want to do it, it was the Premier getting into the cab business. Bermuda cabbies “say” that the Premier owns part of the cab computer dispatch forced on bermuda cabbies. As I said before, in Bermuda only the operator owns the cabs. No fleet garages, only dispatch associations. To be fair, I am told by Bermudans that every business in Bermuda is owned by one or another member of the parliament. Nothing can pass, they say, the parliament if it is bad for any one of the 40 Parliamentarians. That is, if I understood it right.
It is very important for NYC cabbies to DEMAND the TLC go public in advance with the 1 year plans, the 5 year plan and the 10 year plan. Plans for cabbies’ livelihoods should not be secret and sprung on them. As they are boiled degree by degree in the pot like the chicken who never jumped out.
Cabbies need to know, everything should be open, and nothing secret.
Charles T 03.03.10 at 10:20 pm
I feel bad about the cheaters. I took a family of 3 basically on a very small fare only 1 right turn and 4 blocks away. They said, we wish we could have you all the time, you know where you are going. What cabbie in the world does not know you take a right and go 4 blocks. It is sad, because it means this family was taken around a few times, deliberately.
And you know, there is more cheating than there ever was and I wonder if it is a reaction of the stressed cabbie trying to “make it?”
Charles T 03.03.10 at 10:23 pm
The cabbie that stole $40,000 in 6 months, did he own his own cab or was he a fleet renter?
a caby 03.04.10 at 2:26 am
Response to Mr. Charls T,
It was a report in New York Post that according to TLC’s investigation, this driver, Cheema, made $11600 dollars in last July and his day partner made only $4800. An average of $17 dollars per trip, and his partner had an average of $10 per trip.
I understood that he was driving a fleet cab. However, if he owned the Medallion, the Medallion will be suspended or confiscated untill he pays all fines associated with overcharching ( steeling ).
a cabby 03.04.10 at 2:41 am
To Mr. anonymous,
About group ride out of Penn Station and PA, when it comes to those blood sucker vampires that run the TLC, everything is possible. The TLC will continue ripoff cabbies untill they wake up and unite.
Secondly, this Corporation Medallion none sence must come to an end, garages go out of business, and we would see 13400 individual Medallion Owners that each owner drives his own cab like in London, England or civilized Eorope.
Who said that a bunch of moron liberal democrat lawyers (TLC Commissioners ) Know to run a business in this magnitude?
Charles T 03.04.10 at 7:02 am
To a caby, of course the old meters would have given that information if retrieved by a rental garage. Thank you for the information. I am SHOCKED to hear that there is any possibility that the medallion would not be PERMANENTLY confiscated, and that this cheat would retain his hack license and medallion ownership, by paying fines associated with overcharging. Of course, I do not know if the fines would be worth more than the medallion at sale? Does Wasim Khalid Cheemer get a second chance?
Charles T 03.04.10 at 7:08 am
Comment I made about FBI search warrant for past DC taxi commissioner house. One city councilor, forgot to say, is part of bribery investigation (I construed to mean being investigated, not promoting it).
Charles T 03.04.10 at 7:24 am
Cabbies in other cities say their regulators keep it secret or held close the Cheemer type or JFK dispatcher type of swindles or cheating, it is never made public with NAMES like it is here. When regulators keep these things secret, their SUPPOSEDLY CORRECTIVE edicts cannot be weighed for reasonableness. Frankly, I don’t think the whole city taxi business (56,000 drivers someone wrote) should be turned UPSIDE DOWN because of the very few, and why should those who put a blight on the taxi business be allowed to buy their way out?
Charles T 03.04.10 at 7:36 am
Re: fleet rental garage bribery, I always thought fleet rental garage bribes went UPHILL all the way to manager or owner. $365,000 every year in bribes a year and manager/owner not getting any? The reverse is that owners or managers COULD put a quick stop to it, firing the dispatchers, but they seem to be engraved in the dispatch cage cement.
Tariq 03.04.10 at 8:49 pm
i think that was insane what he did but then again when ur lease is sky high what u going to do,why dont they go after the GARAGES & BROKERS,
Charles T 03.04.10 at 9:00 pm
To Brooklyn Mark. Thanks for the info.
joe singh 03.07.10 at 12:41 pm
tariq, they dont go after the garages because you just complain here, you must make a formal complaint to the TLC.
CreditCardCabbie 03.08.10 at 9:27 pm
-TLC investigators are now scouring the records of hundreds of other cabbies to find out whether the illegal practice was isolated or widespread.-
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/gps_eyed_in_drive_to_nail_meter_qo7ERzVdXcybmlE74mtKGO#ixzz0hdwILNW9
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/gps_eyed_in_drive_to_nail_meter_qo7ERzVdXcybmlE74mtKGO
First Prius Cabbie 03.12.10 at 4:07 am
It is terrible what he did. However we can rest easy with the knowledge that Alessandra Zorgniotti is on the case. It is no accident she is on this case. She has a long record of dispensing justice and saving the public from this type of rip-off. We need more like her. I hear she was considered for a spot on The Supreme Court of America. Miss Z has my vote! Way to go baby!
First Prius Cabbie 03.12.10 at 4:09 am
I forgot. I got ripped off today. A passenger got my Burberry scarf.
Anonymous 03.22.10 at 1:20 pm
hay do what it do cab driver got ripped of by passenger dispatcher door man so he flip it hassler