NYC NOW - June 19, 2023: Evening News

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

We’re marking 50 years of hip hop and amplifying the voices of the many women in New York City who are leaving their own mark on the genre. Plus, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with Kareem Ulloa-Alverado and Streetsblog reporter Jesse Coburn about the impact of "ghost" plates on our region.

I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. And this is our one and only episode of NYC now on this Juneteenth. We'll start today's episode with a nod to hip-hop. It was 50 years ago this summer that the sights and sounds of hip-hop culture first emerged on the streets of the Bronx. To mark this milestone, we're amplifying the voices of the many women from our area who are leaving their mark on the genre. My name is Anna Rockefeller Garcia. I am a B-girl, which means I'm a female break dancer, but I also choreographed different styles. I dance house.

I dance salsa, African. And I am a co-founder and a managing director of a nonprofit dance company in the Bronx called Full Circle Productions Inc. Everybody in hip-hop pretty much is baptized with a new name. You rarely use a government or official name or your school name. And it usually comes from the display of the talent, whether it's graffiti or if it's dancing or rapper, poetry. My name came from the fact that I was able to get into a circle, which is the formation we dance in, and cause the fellas in the circle to pause. My skills were too high, or they just weren't used to someone like that, and they didn't want to go after me. So it was

kind of like then a battle if they did go after me. So I was rocking the fellas. So the name is sort of a job description. I was a young girl in East Harle. and then when we moved to the Bronx, so this is the same time that hip hop is starting to emerge and gain more visibility on TV and the movies came out. The people around my neighborhood, they were able to change their situations

and their living conditions through hip hop. They were able to travel. They were able to go somewhere and be sponsored and get more wardrobe and eventually, you know, money. So that influenced me to say, well, there's a way out, you know, It doesn't just have to be gangs or whatever. It was an inspiring expression of creativity.

And I felt like, hey, I can be creative too. So I trusted that what I originally saw hip hop do for the community, it can do that for me as well. When I look back, then I can reflect and say, oh, look at all the things I've done. But day to day, there's more deadlines, there's more goals to reach. So I'm not really thinking about what did I leave behind. But I do want people to know that if you see me at this point in my life feeling successful,

that I can pay my bills through dance, all my bills are paid through dance, then you can do it too. Anna Rockefeller Garcia is a B-Girl pioneer who was raised in Spanish Harlem. Stay close. There's more after the break. Not every temporary license plate is what it appears to be. On thousands of cars across the region, these paper plates lead to a network of used car dealerships and internet businesses that are selling them illegally. In Harlem, a man unwittingly found himself in the middle of this network, delivering these license plates to buyers without understanding that his actions were illegal.

Now he's exposing his former employer. Karim Aluwa Alvarado is a former courier for an illegal temporary license plate business. Jesse Coburn is an investigative reporter for the news site Streets blog. He's been closely following the impact of these so-called ghost plates on our read. The two talked with WNYC's Michael Hill. Kareem, how did you get hired as a courier for this temporary plates business? And what did your job entail? Well, it was early December, and I was just gig searching and stuff like that

because I wanted to get some funds for the holidays. And so I was on Craigslist. I've seen this ad. What I wound up doing was talking to somebody over the phone. There was a phone number. And this guy seemed so sincere about the job. He just said that all you have to do is print out a license and deliver it to people and you get $50. And so I was hooked at the time.

He just told me, hey, you deliver to customers. You go to car shows, you go to dealerships. You can actually promote this and you get more money. And so I didn't understand the gravity of my situation until I actually wound up getting jumped January 7th. When you said you got jumped, you mean you were attacked. Is that what stopped you from doing that kind of work? Oh, yeah, 100%. Because before, all my customers were just like regular people.

What had happened was, again, it seemed like a setup. I go to the precinct. I start handing in the information to the police, and the police said they could lock me up. They could have me arrested. And so at that point, I was like, wow, it seems like everybody's in on it. I was being told not to say anything about it,

But to be honest, it was an experience that I wasn't just going to hold in. Jesse, what did Kareem story lead you to? The main thing that we were interested in was who was behind the illegal operation that employed Kareem. They never revealed themselves to Kareem. They never gave him their real names or the name of the supposed dealership that he was working for. But they left a series of clues that enabled us to sort of follow those clues back to the same place. Basically, this web of connections appears to tie. a man named Nazareth Shaheenian to this operation.

Nazareth is a businessman from Fort Lee, New Jersey. His family had previously been caught fraudulently issuing temporary license plates through their used car dealership in Hasbrook Heights, New Jersey, called gift cars. Nazareth told me that his family no longer was selling temporary license plates, but he didn't really have an explanation for this web of connections that appears to tie him to the illegal operation that employed Kareem. Jesse, what do the Shaheenians say about their business? business. Nazareth Chahenian denied any involvement with the operation that it employed Kareem,

but he didn't really have an explanation for all of this evidence that suggests that he is in fact involved with it. You know, that evidence includes that Nazareth met Kareem in December, shortly after Kareem was hired to give him the special paper to print the temp tags on. The connections also include that the payments that Kareem was making to his employers, were connected to an email address that seems to belong to Nazareth Chicanian's wife. It also includes the fact that the phone number that Karim called to get the job, Nazareth acknowledged to me, is a, quote, business line used by the family. That same phone number has appeared in Facebook ads for temporary license plates.

Jesse, in your last story about these so-called ghost tags, you really honed in on the human cost of these temporary tags. What's the relationship between illegal temporary place? in crime, whether it's violent or nonviolent? People buy illegal temporary license plates for a series of reasons that are basically all criminal in nature, some less serious, some more serious. According to temp tag buyers who I spoke to, you might buy a temp tag if you want to avoid having to pay tolls and traffic tickets.

You might buy one if you are driving an unregistered car that you don't want to pay potentially thousands of dollars in sales tax on, or you might buy a temp tag to commit more serious crimes, you know, with the hope that your license plate will help keep your identity concealed. Fake and fraudulent temp tags in New York City have been used in connection with shootings, robberies, and hit and runs, and a number of the victims of fatal car crashes involving illegal temp tags have been children. Yeah, how many businesses do you think, Jesse, are like that of Kareem's old employers? Is the temporary plate industry driven by a small number of used car dealers and illegal sellers driving the market, or is it the practice so decentralized

it can really never be tracked now? It appears to be a fairly large decentralized industry. In New Jersey and Georgia alone, I found more than 100 used car dealers that have been caught fraudulently issuing temporary license place in recent years. I found dozens more car dealerships that are issuing vast numbers of temp tags with no other discernible business activity. No government agency seems to be tracking the overall number. of fraudulent temp tags that are being issued or are on the streets. But a quick search on Craigslist or Facebook for temporary license plates will show that there is a seemingly vast and endless supply of these things out there. Kareem, this was a harrowing experience for you. Now that some time

has gone by and you're a little removed from it. How do you feel about what you went through? Since the experience, I feel like I have matured. I think my discernment skills have definitely shot up, you know, no matter what someone's telling you, you have to do your research. And to be honest, that's what I didn't do. Although I did get jumped, I am very grateful as well, because had I didn't get jumped and, you know, I kept on doing this illegal activity, then I would have never known this was illegal because no one was telling me this was illegal. As a matter of fact, the first person to have told me that this whole business was illegal was the detective when I was in the interrogation room. And so that's when it hit me.

Like, okay, again, this was treacherous. It was horrible. And the whole experience, I would never want anybody else to get put in a situation like that at all. That's Kareem Alua Alvarado and Streetsblock reporter Jesse Coburn talking with WNYC's Michael Hill. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. We'll be back with our normal three episodes of day scheduled tomorrow. For now, enjoy the rest of your day.