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We all know that New York City streets are filled with cars with out-of-state plates, and many of these vehicles are owned by people who long ago moved to the city, but haven’t complied with state law to require cars to be registered in New York within 30 days of becoming a resident.
An easy solution for New York State car insurers to detect potential “garage fraud,” one of several factors driving up the high cost of car insurance in the state, is hiding in plain sight.
According to city data, there are 20,992 vehicles that are registered outside of the tri-state area (plus Pennsylvania) that have received at least one violation in New York City in each quarter this year — a frequency of transgression that suggests that these vehicles, and their owners, are in the city but are intentionally avoiding New York State’s higher insurance rates.
This creates a vicious cycle. By adding risk to city streets, but not contributing to the insurance pool, these people committing “garage fraud” are shifting the insurance burden to car owners who do properly register their cars and pay insurance in state, further driving up insurance rates for law-abiding drivers. This in turn gets more people to register their cars out-of-state or even to drive without insurance. On this topic we even agree with outgoing Council Member Bob Holden!
Here's a Virginia-plated car that sits every day in Brooklyn — and its owner is likely committing insurance fraud.Photo: Ayem Notsaying
Car insurance rates are not an obvious concern for Streetsblog readers, but if insurers used public automated speeding, red light violation and parking ticket data to identify vehicle owners potentially committing insurance fraud, that would at least create an incentive for these drivers to avoid dangerous and illegal behavior on our streets. It can also ensure that vehicles driving on city streets have levels of insurance required by New York State, and are subject to state safety and emissions inspections.
As a public service, we have done the insurers’ work for them and compiled a list of potential targets to help them get started, free of charge!
To be clear, inclusion on this list is not necessarily an indication that these drivers have done anything wrong. Some of the plate numbers in our analysis could be commercial vehicles, rental cars or people who live elsewhere but happen to frequently drive to New York City. But let's be honest: many of these vehicle’s owners have moved to New York and are committing insurance fraud. (Do we really think that all 183 vehicles on the list from Washington State drove back and forth to New York multiple times this year? And got a ticket in each quarter? Common sense says these car owners are scammers, a common problem that Jimmy and the Jaywalkers once put into song.)
Of even greater concern, a number of these violations are for speeding and running red lights, which of course endanger New Yorkers. Foolishly, state law prevents insurers from using speeding violations “for insurance purposes in the provision of motor vehicle insurance coverage,” this information arguably can be used to detect potential insurance fraud.
Both New York State DMV and insurers should use the violation data to identify potential fraud. So let's make it easy for them:
Here is the entire list of the 20,992 vehicles that have had at least one violation in New York City in each quarter this year. Florida, at 4,417, represents a plurality — which makes sense because the Sunshine State does not require annual safety or emissions inspection, and which does not have state income tax potentially meaning the owners are falsely claiming residency in Florida. (Many rental cars are registered in Florida, so some of these scofflaws could be innocent, at least, of insurance fraud.) The other outliers are Virginia (2,543), North Carolina (1,829), Massachusetts (1,237), Maryland (977) and Georgia (973). These vehicles have an average of nearly 19 violations each.
Even higher priority is the subset of this list – 848 vehicles that have at least one violation in each quarter this year and have 16 or more automated speeding violations this year. According to a recent DOT report these vehicles are twice as likely to be involved in a crash involving a seriously injury or fatality. That’s right – these nearly 1,000 vehicles are making our streets far more dangerous while significantly increasing the burden on insurance companies — yet they are not paying a penny for car insurance in New York State! And 556 of these vehicles are, as of this writing, above the threshold at which they can be booted or towed. And 44 of these "out-of-state" drivers owe more than $10,000 in fines.
To be clear, these 21,000 vehicles are likely just the tip of the massive iceberg of “garage fraud.” Insurance companies can and should set the criteria much looser to identify far more potential fraudsters than just these vehicles. Overall, there were 514,690 vehicles from these states and they received a total of 1,752,371 violations between Jan. 1 and Dec. 12, 2025. That's an average of 3.4 violations per vehicle. They're not all scammers, but a lot of them are: For example, there are 35,330 vehicles from states other than New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania that have 10 or more violations to date this year, though not necessarily one in every quarter.
What do we want as advocates? At the very least, insurers must consistently ask the owners of any vehicle with violations over multiple months to demand proof of residency outside New York State — a utility bill, lease agreement, etc.
And law enforcement, working with the New York State DMV, must put two-and-two together more rapidly; cars with out-of-state plates that repeatedly get tickets should raise a different, more urgent, red flag. In the first three-quarters of 2025, cops wrote just 281 tickets for "Unregistered motor vehicle — non-resident" — but it doesn't seem like those were for vehicles that are improperly registered, but rather for vehicles that aren't registered at all. In any event, it's far too few.
Finally, we recommend that the New York State legislature pass a law requiring insurers to identify and strictly enforce insurance fraud.
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