The Attorney general’s office of Pennsylvania on Wednesday (April 19) charged several people as part of an organized crime ring that allegedly earned millions of dollars renting out fraudulently obtained license plates.
The motorist rented these Pennsylvania plates, which were packaged with fraudulent insurance paperwork to avoid traffic tickets, parking fines and highway tolls.
Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania Attorney General estimated the price tag in losses to Pennsylvania, New York and Florida at $2 million. He suggested that there could be similar crimes in other states.
The ring’s leader Raphael Levi used a web of fake car dealerships and transporter businesses, which he set up across the state to get license plates, starting around 2008. He obtained more than one thousand license plates, and about 400 are still active. He then rented the plates $400 per month.
“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.”
Each license plate was registered to a business associated with Levi. When law enforcement or toll operators mailed fines, it went to post office boxes or addressed associated with the businesses within the Levi organization and the organization ignored the violations.
Levi also used fake auto insurance cards, so that when an accident happened and other motorist field claims, no payment resulted.
Levi’s lawyer did not comment anything on Wednesday. Levi and 11 other suspects were booked in suburban Harrisburg on Wednesday.
Levi is held on $600,000 bail, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said.
A stolen notary seal and falsified insurance policy helped extend schemes that included washing car titles to evade loans and selling cars with rolled back odometers to pump up resale values. The ring evaded paying state sales tax by reporting false vehicle trade-in values, it said.
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