$14M FOR CAB CROOK'S MEDALLIONS:
Sells $24M in medallions, but most just kicking tires
Going once, going twice … sold!
Auctioneers got more than $24 million in cash on Thursday for 139 taxi medallions that once belonged to the city’s taxi king, Evgeny Freidman.
Taxi industry vets, from drivers to insurers to attorneys, filled a room on the second floor of the Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel in Queens — not to buy, but to witness the bankruptcy auction.
Yet it was a staid affair in Flushing, where no bids were offered to auctioneer Richard Maltz for a bulk of the medallions. One stalking horse bid offered $170,000 apiece for 131 medallions, while a second bid snared eight medallions for $250,000 apiece, for a grand total of $24.2 million.
There were a mix of medallions up for auction, such as 20 for hybrid taxis and 32 for accessible taxis. When the taxi industry was riding high, one medallion would sell for more than $1 million.
Attendees told the Daily News they wanted to check out the market for medallions, where lending is tight and revenue is smaller than in years past, thanks to Uber and other app-based car services.
“I want to know what’s going on, if the price is going all the way down,” Pierre DuJour, a driver and medallion owner with nearly 40 years in the industry, said before the auction. “For the time being, I don’t have any expectations.”
Now that he knows how much — or how little — the medallions went for, DuJour said he’ll try to negotiate with his lender to lower the principle from the $800,000 loan he took out for his medallion in 2010.
Barry Waldman, with City Taxi Brokerage, said Thursday’s auction “sets a barometer for future sales,” which will mainly be cash purchases.
“It weeds out a lot of prospective buyers who just don’t have that kind of money,” Waldman said.
He believed the winning stalking horse bids were “speculative.”
“It’s really somebody just trying to get medallions at what they think is the low, low price. And hopefully, maybe in two or three years, the political atmosphere that exists now may change,” Waldman said, referring to efforts in the City Council to regulate app companies to raise medallion values.
Freidman, however, did not think these medallions were sold for a low price.
“I think they overpaid for them,” he told The News.
Freidman said another batch of 46 foreclosed medallions that were previously auctioned off, are collecting dust, instead of collecting taxi fare money. He likened the medallion purchase to a buying a house and leaving it empty.
“I was very happy to part with these medallions,” he said.
The man who was dubbed the taxi king for the vast empire he built on 900 medallions pleaded guilty last month to felony tax fraud for failing to pay $5 million in taxes from his fleet. Freidman had a taxi medallion business with Michael Cohen, President Trump’s lawyer, and reportedly agreed to cooperate with federal and state investigations into the embattled attorney.
The onetime taxi magnate has denied he got a deal in exchange for flipping on Cohen.
The plunge in medallion values also attracted interest from 26-year-old Rashedul Khan, from Rego Park. Khan has been on the hunt for a medallion at auctions as an investment and a way to make extra money each month. He is biding his time for the right price, perhaps as low as $150,000.
But Khan dismissed the auction as a “show” because of the big bucks dropped for a huge bundle of medallions at a time when it’s tough to attract riders to the backseats of taxis.
“Right now, I’m just gonna sit back and relax. Whatever game they’re playing, let them play it,” Khan said. “When they’re done, I’ll start bidding.”