New York Hotel Doormen Busted for Double Tip Taxi Scam

by underthesea

New York City and hotel officials are busting doormen who are demanding that taxi cab drivers hand them money--before doormen are handing over passengers. New York City planned legislation would make it illegal for anyone to accept money in exchange for setting up cab fares, said City Councilman James Vacca. "It's unfair," Vacca, chairman of the Transportation Committee, told The Post yesterday. "I want to explore legislation that would make it illegal for any business [including New York hotels] to allow or request solicitation of money for providing taxi service." The Post first busted the shady doormen--porters at New York’s most luxurious hotels demanding kickbacks on the down-low: $5 to $15 in exchange for providing airport-bound fares. Brian Conboy, longtime doorman at the Paramount Hotel says The Post, was caught in the act-- demanding fees from about a dozen taxi cab drivers in one week’s time. The Post reports that Hotel officials are saying that the doorman is now out on a scheduled vacation yesterday. That doorman's vacation may be extended--til the scandal blows over. In the hotel doorman scheme The Post describes, if New York taxi cab drivers refuse to hand a hotel doorman $5 for a La Guardia Airport fare, or $10 for JFK Airport, or $15 for Newark Airport, doormen will blacklist the cab drivers from those taxi stands that are located outside of the upscale hotels where doormen are working. The allegation is that doormen are getting their cake—and eating it too: the doorman scheme allows or promises working doormen a double financial tip: one ‘tip’ (or basically an ‘extortion’) from the taxi cab driver, a second tip from the rider requesting the cab. There’s only one issue New York City is fighting with: while questionably unethical, right now it’s not illegal. New York's Vacca plans to make that change. Taxi officials say they’re also investigating the practice, per the massive amount of complaints received from their own taxi cab drivers.

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