Harrisburg, PA – Pennsylvania’s attorney general’s office on Wednesday charged a dozen people as part of an organized crime ring that it said had made millions of dollars renting out fraudulently obtained license plates, primarily in New York City.
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The people who rented the Pennsylvania plates — which were packaged with fraudulent insurance paperwork — allegedly used the anonymity to evade traffic tickets, parking fines and highway tolls.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro estimated the price tag in losses to Pennsylvania, New York and Florida at $2 million, and possibly higher. He suggested similar operations in other states.
The ring, allegedly led by 50 year old Raphael Levi, of Brooklyn, NY, used a web of fake car dealerships and transporter businesses it set up in Pennsylvania to get license plates, starting in 2008. All told, it obtained more than 1,000 license plates, and about 400 were still active. It then rented about the plates for $400 per month, or more, prosecutors said.
“All of this was a big facade, it was phony, it wasn’t real,” Shapiro said. “There weren’t these big storefronts where legitimate operations were going on, and then in the back maybe some illegitimate business practices. This was all constructed as one big fraud.”
The plates were registered to a business associated with Levi, authorities said. When law enforcement, parking authorities or toll operators mailed fines, notices or other violations, it went to post office boxes or addresses associated with the businesses within the Levi organization, they said. The Levi organization ignored the violations, they said.
They also used fake auto insurance cards, so that when an accident happened and other motorists filed claims, no payment resulted, Shapiro said.
Shapiro would not say whether users of the rented plates will be charged, but said the investigation is ongoing.
A lawyer for Levi did not return requests for comment Wednesday evening. Levi and 11 other defendants were booked in suburban Harrisburg on Wednesday, the attorney general’s office said.
Levi was ordered held on $600,000 bail, an attorney general’s office spokesman said.
A stolen notary seal and falsified insurance policy paperwork helped extend schemes that also included washing car titles to evade loans and selling cars with rolled-back odometers to pump up resale values, authorities said.
A list of all defendants and the businesses charged today in connection with the Levi organized crime ring is available here .
Handsome group.
Maybe now we will get rid of all the vehicles displaying phony PA plates and crowding our already overcrowded streets!