meanwhile investigative reporting by a local journalist is leading to the Crackdown of so-called ghost tags in the state their New Jersey used car dealers that illegally sell temporary license plates thousands of them to make a buck and help drivers evade fines tolls and even crimes I recently spoke with Jesse Coburn reporter for streets blog NYC whose work uncovered the rise in New Jersey's Black Market temp tag industry Jesse thank you first of all for coming in to talk about this I'm curious off the bat why there's such a black market for these tags yeah people use these tags for a variety of reasons some use them to avoid paying tolls and traffic tickets some use them to avoid paying sales taxes and registration fees on cars purchased on the private Market because they're untraceable exactly they're basically keeping them off the books they're effectively ghost cars so I'm curious through your reporting why you found New Jersey in particular was such a hotbed to be able to access these tags yeah New Jersey the hotbed basically because the state laws and regulations surrounding temp tags in the used car industry more generally are a lot more permissive than other states it's easier to get a used car dealership license in New Jersey than other nearby States and once you get that license it's remarkably easy to print vast numbers of fraudulent tags the Motor Vehicle Commission run a web portal through which licensed dealers can print the temp tags we found that you can plug totally fake and fraudulent information into that portal fake buyer fake car information and the commission will still allow you to print that tag so wow I mean this is a robust Black Market clearly there are a lot of people out there with these tags is there any talk I mean now that your reporting is out there about cracking down on some of this why have the regulations been so LAX it's a good question one that's hard to answer the governor's office the Motor Vehicle Commission and the primary trade group representing the used car dealers in the state have more or less declined to talk about the issue publicly so far I think there is a perception within the industry that stiffening regulations could hurt legitimate upstanding dealers as well could make it harder for them to do business of course there's other dealers who want to see the regulations stiffen they feel that this widespread fraud within their industry is tarnishing their reputation but last week State assemblyman Paul Moriarty introduced a bill that would create new Criminal penalties for selling driving with even possessing fraudulent temp tags I would also require the Motor Vehicle Commission to revoke the licenses of dealers caught selling tags and it would increase the fines the commission could impose on dealers for selling tags but I mean as you mentioned there's already thousands of these out there is there talk about clawing those back or what can be done to that extent not very much I mean fortunately the tags do expire at a certain point and so if you're driving with a three-month-old or a year old New Jersey temp tag that's likely just a matter of time I suppose before yeah you're at the end of that limit yes but it seems that there's an endless supply of new tags that you can find online what really spurred the Advent of all of these tags being out there because it really wasn't until at least through your reporting uh recent years that we saw a spike in these being used that's right the black market really exploded during the pandemic what happened is Motor Vehicle Commission offices were closed and it became difficult to register new cars if you were buying them on the private Market people in that situation started approaching dealers saying hey can you uh sell me attempt just to tide me over dealers who were struggling with their own pandemic related disruption started obliging but then more unscrupulous actors started entering the market like people who wanted temp tags for more nefarious reasons and dealers who suddenly seemed more interested in selling tags and selling cars Jesse Coburn a really interesting reporting thank you so much for sharing it with us thanks so much for having me [Music]