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New York Today

How New York’s Taxi Titans Roiled Cities Hundreds of Miles Away

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It’s Monday.

Weather: Mostly cloudy and windy, with highs in the mid-70s. Showers are likely after 5 p.m.

Alternate-side parking: In effect until Wednesday (Yom Kippur).


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Credit...Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

In the early 2000s, a group of New Yorkers did something unexpected.

They bought a bunch of taxi medallions that allowed them to own and operate vehicles hundreds of miles away, in Chicago. Medallions in that city were considered such an inexpensive commodity that Chicago had, at times, given them away free.

This turned out to be an early sign of a takeover of taxi markets across the country by some New Yorkers who were about to teach drivers in other cities a painful lesson.

The real taxi money wasn’t made by charging passengers; it was made by raising the price of medallions and financing loans to drivers who wanted to buy them.

In May, The Times’s Brian M. Rosenthal exposed the financial maneuvers that helped lead to the collapse of the taxi industry in New York City.

His series detailed potential market manipulation of taxi medallion prices and showed how some of the people who manipulated those prices also made money by providing drivers with high loan amounts, long loan lengths, steep fees and interest-only terms.

The Department of Justice and the New York attorney general soon opened investigations into the industry. The city arrested a debt collector, waived $10 million in fees owed by medallion owners and strengthened regulations.

Symon Garber, a New York fleet owner, along with a group of partners, began buying medallions in Chicago and lending to other buyers. They eventually bought 800 of the city’s 7,000 medallions.

Michael Levine, a legend in New York’s taxi industry, bought more than 500 medallions in Chicago. Mr. Levine also was involved in a company that provided at least 750 loans to medallion owners.

At least 40 other New Yorkers bought Chicago medallions, including Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, records show.

Then some of the same people who roiled New York’s industry expanded their operations. Medallion prices soared to $700,000 in Boston, $550,000 in Philadelphia, $400,000 in Miami and $250,000 in San Francisco.

But in Chicago, New Yorkers eventually bought almost half of that city’s medallions, records showed. The average cost of a medallion there — less than $50,000 in 2006 — rose to nearly $400,000 before prices began plummeting in 2013.

Today, a Chicago taxi medallion is worth $30,000 or less.

“In retrospect, it should’ve set off alarm bells” that New Yorkers were entering Chicago’s market,” said Michael Negron, who was a policy adviser to Rahm Emanuel, a former Chicago mayor. “Outside investors were coming in to upend the industry, and everybody kind of missed it.”

The New Yorkers who bought medallions in Chicago and elsewhere said in interviews with Mr. Rosenthal that they were never accused of breaking any laws. They said that as New York medallion prices rose, it made sense to pursue new opportunities.


A man who the police said was holding a metal bar dripping with blood was arrested and charged over the weekend in connection with the murders of four homeless men early Saturday in the Chinatown neighborhood of Manhattan.

A fifth homeless man, who was also attacked, was in critical condition on Sunday.

Rudy Santos was charged with four counts of murder, the police said.

The attacks occurred near the Bowery, which has a history of offering refuge to homeless people — both on the streets and in flophouses. The five men were just south of Bowery Mission, one of the city’s oldest aid organizations.

[How a murderous rampage reveals perils for the street homeless.]

Advocates say it is difficult to count the people living on New York City’s streets, in the subways and in other public spaces, but a tally in January put the number at 3,588.

Want more news? Check out our full coverage.

The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.


A question on the ballot on Election Day will ask if New York City voters should rank candidates in primary elections and some citywide races by preference. [Wall Street Journal]

Of the five boroughs, the Bronx has the most heat and hot water complaints, according to 311 data. [Curbed New York]

Staten Island’s wild turkeys won’t be relocated upstate just yet. [SILive.com]


Watch a production of Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie” at the Wild Project Theater in Manhattan. 7 p.m. [$35]

Join a poetry conversation about “self/ser,” a new collection by River Coello, at Books Are Magic, in Brooklyn. 7:30 p.m. [Free]

Real-life and pop-culture images of female astronauts and aviators are part of the “Imaging Women in Space” exhibition at the New York Science Hall in Queens. 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. [$16]

Emmett Lindner

Events are subject to change, so double-check before heading out. For more events, see the going-out guides from The Times’s culture pages.


The Times’s George Gene Gustines reports:

Imagine a bookstore geared toward young readers, with daily classes in writing and drawing their own comic books.

Loot, a new shop that does just that, is the brainchild of Joseph Einhorn, a father of three who said he had two goals: to get young readers interested in comics and to get them away from screens. “I felt that if we didn’t do this, there would be a whole generation of young people that would miss this medium completely,” Mr. Einhorn said.

The store opened in July above Frank’s Wine Bar, at 457 Court Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. A $30 monthly membership fee pays for art materials and instruction, and lets the young subscribers borrow one comic at a time.

The eyeglass retailer Warby Parker, the French film director Louis Leterrier and others have paid for 100 yearlong memberships, earmarked for two public schools and the Red Hook Initiative, a community nonprofit.

Some of Loot’s budding cartoonists are putting the educational materials to good use. Mae Lower, 8, wrote and drew a comic (with colors by her sister, Joan, 4) about a girl named Ekua who is bullied in school. In 16 pages, Ekua learns to adapt and prospers.

Mae goes by the pen name Stella Rojo.

It’s Monday — take a look, it’s in a book.


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Dear Diary:

Fifty-one years ago, I cut my high school classes and took the commuter train from Peekskill to Manhattan by myself for the first time.

I was wearing my favorite minidress and floppy hat, and I had a large tasseled leather bag and a sketchbook. I went to the Museum of Modern Art, where I sat and sketched Matisse’s sculpture of a woman named Jeannette. I felt uneasy and confident at the same time.

From there, I headed to Greenwich Village. I walked around Washington Square Park listening to the guitar players on the sidewalks. I was entranced by the flower children wading in the fountain. I wandered past head shops that smelled of patchouli and sandalwood. I bought a handmade silver ring with a narrow green stone for my index finger.

I moved away from New York not long after that, but my son lives in Brooklyn now. When I visited him last year, I asked him to take me to Washington Square Park. And I gave him the silver ring I bought back then.

— Kerry Workman


New York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com.

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Azi Paybarah writes the New York Today column. He was raised in Queens, educated in Albany and lives in Manhattan. He worked at The Queens Tribune, The New York Sun, Politico New York and elsewhere before joining The Times. Email him or follow him on Twitter. More about Azi Paybarah

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