The great NYC ticket scam
Drivers owe triple after 3-year scam
A parking-ticket broker duped his clients for more than 3¹/2 years by submitting phony documents to get 816 summonses dismissed — and now, the unsuspecting motorists are being socked with triple damages by the city.
The Post reported exclusively about charlatan Emmanuel Amofah — a former administrative law judge at the Parking Violations Bureau — when one of his victims stepped forward in May.
But the scope of his brazen scam was revealed only this month, when the city’s Finance Department moved to reinstate all of the dismissed tickets, citing massive fraud.
Records at the Office of Administrative Trials & Hearings show Amofah’s Parking Ticket Busters Inc. submitted fake and doctored paperwork for hundreds of summonses between May 15, 2013, and Dec. 14, 2016.
Officials said it took so long to detect the scam because the tickets were submitted through the Web and dispersed for adjudication to judges in all the boroughs.
If they had been submitted in batches in person, as is common for businesses, officials said red flags might have gone up sooner.
Administrative Law Judge John Spooner ruled Dec. 6 that Amofah used various methods to doctor Muni-Meter receipts, most frequently by altering time stamps to make tickets invalid.
Amofah charged a 20-percent fee for each ticket he got tossed.
But his clients ended up holding the bag for an extra $282,000 in penalties.
The city holds registered drivers liable for fraud, even if it’s committed by hired ticket brokers, and charges triple damages.
Small-business owners who fell prey to Amofah say the additional fines are devastating to their operations.
Queens contractor J&G Marble and Tile Corp. now owes the city $152,820 in base fines and additional fees on 116 summonses, court records show.
“That’s pretty much my operating capital,” said owner Giancarlo De Lellis, who had to take his three company trucks off the road for fear they’d be towed while he appeals. He also had to lay off two workers.
“We’re renting vehicles from U-Haul pretty much on a daily basis to keep operations moving forward,” he said. “I have my guys moving materials on the train, which isn’t the easiest thing to do.”
Collectively, the Amofah clients cited by the city owe $112,000 on the face value of their 816 tickets, plus another $282,000 in penalties — a total of $394,000, records show.
Amofah’s whereabouts are unknown, and he did not respond to multiple e-mails. The phone number for Parking Ticket Busters Inc. appeared to be disconnected Tuesday.
Spooner imposed the maximum-allowable punishment on Amofah, who has not been arrested, according to court records: a five-year ban on acting as a ticket broker.
Local media reports in the African nation of Ghana over the summer indicated he was running for elective office there. mjaeger@nypost.com