NYC using new 'Ghostbusters' unit to crack down on vehicles with untraceable license plates

Call them Ghostbusters.

A new unit of NYPD officers detailed to the New York City Department of Sanitation has seized nearly 300 vehicles in the first five days of operation, Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday.

The effort is part of an ongoing crackdown on so-called "ghost cars" — vehicles with forged and altered license plates, untraceable by traffic cameras and toll readers.

The new task force, which saw 15 uniformed NYPD personnel working in conjunction with the sanitation department, began operations Sept. 10. During the first five nights, the unit seized 295 ghost vehicles, officials said.

"These cars are a pain ... They do what they want to do. They also are very much part of the criminal element," Adams said at a news conference in Queens with other city officials to announce the task force. " ... They are a major impact on crime as they move through the night."

To date, the city said its task forces — some working in conjunction with the city Sheriff's Office, MTA Bridge and Tunnel officers, state police, the state's Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police — have made 490 arrests, issued 20,640 summonses and seized 2,303 vehicles whose owners, officials said, owe more than $21 million in unpaid tolls, taxes and fees.

Vehicles seized are held for processing, and either claimed following the payment of outstanding fees or auctioned or destroyed once investigations are completed.

Ghost cars "are not hard to find," said Sanitation Department commissioner Jessica Tisch at the news conference.

"If you own one of these vehicles you are going to go to sleep feeling smug about avoiding registration fees," Tisch said, "but make no mistake about it, one day quite soon you are going to find that your ghost car is gone."

Since the start of the pandemic, officials said, there have been more than 20,000 complaints of vehicles with phony paper license plates, which, along with other concealment tactics that make plates unreadable or untraceable, rob the city and state of millions in tolls and unpaid fines.

In a statement, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine said: "Bad actors with defaced, obscured, or fraudulent plates have been speeding and running red lights with impunity as well as avoiding paying their fair share in tolls" for years.

The enforcement campaigns help make city streets safer for drivers and pedestrians, Levine said, and "penalize drivers who are trying to cheat the system."

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”