Ghost cars — or cars with fake, obscured, or mismatched license plates — continue to wreak havoc on city streets despite years of increased enforcement, and are more likely to violate New York City traffic laws than their law abiding counterparts, according to a new report out of the City Council.
Investigators at Council’s Oversight and Investigations Division looked at over 3,500 vehicles parked on city streets known to have a lot of out-of-state plates. Nearly one-fifth of the 768 non-New York-plated vehicles investigators observed displayed license plates that were not registered to the vehicles.
Vehicles in the survey with mismatched plates accrued 49 percent more camera violations for speeding in school zones and 74 percent more tickets for blocking a fire hydrant than cars with matched plates, the reported released on Thursday said.
“The use of ghost plates, especially those from out of state, to evade responsibility for violations and fines has become too commonplace throughout our city,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a statement.
“The Council’s investigation into this systemic problem underscores the need for more coordinated enforcement and policies to ensure bad actors who are more likely to commit traffic violations that jeopardize our public safety are held accountable for their actions.”
License plate scofflaws drivers cost the city money: Even within the limited sample surveyed by the Council, vehicles with ghost plates owed over $80,000 in fines. The true citywide total is likely far higher.
The problem persists
An award-winning 2023 Streetsblog investigation broke open the story about the booming illegal market for fake temporary license plates. As a result of the investigation, several states cracked down and made it harder for dealers to pull off this kind of scam.
State and city officials also made efforts to respond to the issue. Mayor Adams's "Ghost Car Task Force", brought together NYPD, the Sheriff's Office and DOT, boasting over 4,000 impounds, 40,000 summonses, and 900 arrests in 2024.
The Council report exposes how little impact those efforts had — what investigators described as "a broader enforcement gap that allows improperly plated vehicles to operate with little oversight."
“Despite recent enforcement efforts by law enforcement and new rules from the Department of Transportation ... out-of-state-plated ghost vehicles remain a persistent, citywide problem," the report said.
The Council's findings also show there is still a booming market for fake plates and tools to obscure license plates — all illegal to sell under city law.
And the scammers are hiding in plain sight: They openly market on social media, tempting New Yorkers with ads that offer “real” solutions to the ghost tags of the past.
One such company, First Chance Auto, uses its large instagram following to sell sketchy Virginia license plates and titles to people in the five boroughs, encouraging New Yorkers to break the law and register out of state. Other accounts sell license plate covers or stickers to cover license plate characters that make them invisible to camera enforcement.
These kinds of ads are increasingly common, the council report said — exposing the shortcomings of the city's 2022 law that banned selling materials that cover or deface plates.
The Council’s report puts numbers to patterns uncovered Streetsblog's 2023 investigation and Streetsblog Editor-in-Chief Gersh Kuntzman's "Criminal Mischief" series.
Ghost plates can be found all over the city, the drivers who use them are a danger on the road — and the laws in place to block the sale of illegal plates and plate-altering tools are clearly not working. Scofflaw drivers know a new ghost plate is a ticket to impunity.
City legislators want to put a stop to the pervasive lawbreaking.
“This investigation shows just how widespread the problem is, from mismatched plates to cars with no plates at all, racking up unpaid tickets and blocking fire hydrants," said Council Oversight and Investigations Chair Gale Brewer (D-Upper West Side). "It is unacceptable that online marketplaces still allow the sale of fake or fraudulent plates that fuel this crisis."
