Kareem found out the hard way that his Craigslist gig delivering temp tags was illegal. Now he's exposing the operation that employed him, revealing clues about his anonymous bosses that all trace back to the same place. Co-published with Motherboard. You can start immediately. So he called the number. Temporary license plates exist so that people who buy cars can drive them before receiving metal plates.
But drivers found another use for them during the pandemic: buy nazareth temp tag on the black market and you can keep your car anonymous and off the books. No more tickets nazareth the mail for running red lights. No CCTV footage enabling police to identify you from your license plate after you, say, shoot people in Brooklyn or run over a family in the Bronx.
In recent years, New York and other parts of the country suddenly seemed to be awash in paper tags. Not yet at least. Kareem was 20 when he took the job. He was living nazareth his parents in Harlem, making art and working odd jobs.
Outgoing, with an easy smile, Kareem liked work that involved talking to people. In a way, this would prove to be a job like that. First Kareem spoke to David, or King Davidas he called himself—the guy who answered when Kareem called the number in the Craigslist ad. King David was affable. He sounded young. The man would give Kareem paper, David explained. Shortly after he arrived at the strip mall, a sedan rolled up, and an older, mostly bald man got out.
They exchanged a few words, and the man handed Kareem the paper. The job craigslist straightforward. Kareem received emails with temporary license plates attached as PDFs, then he printed and delivered them to customers throughout the city.
Kareem has never owned a car, so the idea that a dealership would deliver craigslist plates seemed reasonable enough. The customers were grateful. It just seemed so legit. Craigslist never shared their real names. There were other couriers in the chat, too—a list shared in the chat suggests they numbered in the dozens.
A dispatcher would message out an address, and the first courier to respond got the assignment. Streetsblog reviewed nazareth chat logs as well as screenshots of the Zelle payments, emails Kareem received from dispatchers, and the temp tag PDFs.
Kareem was upbeat craigslist polite in the chat, coming across like any young, new employee eager to make a good impression.
‘Duped’: A Harlem 20-Something Blows the Whistle on an Illegal Temporary License Plate Business
Everything was great. Zooemoore onlyfans leaked would put this job on his resume, he thought. As far as jobs like that went, this was a pretty good one: flexible, reliable, easy. Until Nazareth 7. Kareem set out that day to make a delivery in the Bronx. While he was talking to the would-be customer on the street, he said, two men approached from behind, and one punched Kareem in craigslist head, knocking him to the ground.
Suddenly, a knife was at his throat. The men took his phone, wallet, and binder full of art, then dashed off. Kareem was terrified, and his lip was bleeding. He ran to a nearby business and asked someone there to call the cops, nazareth arrived and took Kareem to a precinct house. Kareem wanted to file a report. Kareem remembers the detective saying. If you file a report, I can have you arrested.
Kareem was shocked. He left the station house without filing a report, his lip swelling up. Fear, shame, and indignation tumbled inside of him. From that tumult, a question emerged: Who had he been working for?
Not long before Kareem saw craigslist ad on Craigslist, Nazareth Shahinian was attempting to sell a cookie jar on Facebook.
It was just the latest business venture for Shahinian, a prolific entrepreneur of sorts who lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Shahinian and his sons—David and Abraham—are listed in New Jersey business records as the trailer wire hookup or agents of numerous companies, some whose purpose is unclear.
One, called Armeniking Corporation, has little online footprint beyond a YouTube account with one videoin which Nazareth offers tips on grilling meat. InNazareth was barred from taking the New Jersey real estate license exam for two years after he was caught breaking test rules by copying questions and taking notes during an exam.
Five years later, he pleaded guilty to unauthorized practice of law. Two years after that, he received a Masters of Law from Thomas Jefferson School of Law which then lost its national accreditation in The Shahinians are also in the used car industry. Gift Cars is located in an odd place for a car dealership, on a dead-end industrial street wedged between New Jersey Craigslist tracks and Teterboro Airport. The building is strange, too: a two-story brick structure nazareth by cracked, weedy pavement that has signs outside listing dozens of other tenants, all apparently used car dealers.
Gift Cars does not appear to be a high-volume dealership. The company does not have a website. That leap in car sales craigslist not what it seemed. The commission caught the Shahinians fraudulently issuing temps, according to an October letter from the commission obtained through a records request.
And Nazareth, in an interview with Streetsblog in December, admitted Gift Cars had been selling tags nazareth.
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He characterized selling temps during the pandemic as a public service of sorts: DMVs were frequently closed at that time, making it hard to register new cars. But people still needed to get nazareth. They needed license plates. Across New Jersey and other states, obscure dealerships started printing massive numbers of temp tags while displaying little other business activity, a Streetsblog investigation found.
It was around then that dubious-looking paper tags became commonplace on cars in New York City and elsewhere. Some drivers had legitimate reasons for using those tags—the Motor Vehicle Commission extended expired New Jersey temps by a few months infor example. Others had less defensible reasons, like people using fake or fraudulent temp tags for cover while driving without licenses or car insurance.
Such motorists had no trouble finding tags for sale online. There are both real and fake craigslist tags on the black market—both being sold illegally. The fake ones are made by scammers with graphics software. The real ones are sold by licensed dealers and generally fetch higher prices, since they look legal craigslist police.
A new bill in the New Jersey legislature would change that. Nazareth craigslist Streetsblog in December that Gift Cars was no longer selling tags. And yet, a web of connections appears to tie Nazareth to the operation that employed Kareem. For one, it appears to have been Nazareth who met Kareem in the parking lot in Fort Lee and gave him the temp tag paper.
Nazareth has referred to his wife as Inga—possibly a nickname. Finally, there is the phone number that Kareem called to get the job. It also appeared in Armenian - and Russian -language newspapers in Canada last year, in classified ads seeking laborers, next to the name Nazareth. Notably, that same number has also appeared in Facebook ads offering New Jersey temporary license plates for sale. He has many partners, friends. He has million friends. Too many friends. I cannot control that. Streetsblog repeatedly requested comments from David, Abraham, Aida, and Jessie Granito at phone numbers and email addresses associated with their names in online databases and business and legal records, as well as through Facebook and through Nazareth.
They did not respond to those requests. Around the time that Nazareth Cars was caught selling temp tags inJ G Auto Sale, a car dealership in North Bergen, started getting strange phone calls.
That appears to be true: state data show the number of temps issued by J G has remained consistent and slightly below the average New Jersey dealer sinceand a request for commission disciplinary records involving the dealership yielded no results.
Someone was putting his dealership name on fake temp tags and selling them illegally, it seemed. The owner, who asked not to be named, says he has complained repeatedly to law enforcement and the Motor Vehicle Commission about the problem.
Hanover police said they did not know whether King was working with anyone else. He started a GoFundMe for the scooter. In messages reviewed by Streetsblog, Kareem told his dispatchers about getting jumped the day it happened. They were sympathetic, but nobody offered to compensate him for his on-the-job losses.
He was the nazareth guy, he realized. These people had implicated him in a criminal operation without telling him what they were really doing or https://telegram-web.online/top-dating-sites-in-new-york.php clear the risks involved.
And when those risks materialized, it was Kareem getting punched in the face, not them.