Exploring the fraudulent use of temporary license plates in New York City, the chapter exposes how individuals exploit these plates to evade tolls, parking tickets, and even engage in criminal activities, highlighting the pervasive fraud within the system.
Jesse Coburn is an investigative reporter at Streetsblog. He won the Polk Award for Local Reporting for "Ghost Tags," his series on the black market for temporary license plates.
“You can imagine this having never become a problem, because it’s so weird. What a weird scam. I’m going to print and sell tens of thousands of paper license plates. But someone figured it out. And then a lot more people followed. It just exploded.”
This is the second in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.
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