Soft Served: NYC Seizes Scofflaw Ice Cream Trucks

NEW YORK — They've been soft-served. New York City started seizing nearly four dozen scofflaw ice cream trucks Wednesday whose owners are accused of evading nearly $4.5 million in fines.

The dessert mavens thwarted the city's efforts to collect the parking and traffic fines by transferring ownership of their 76 trucks between several different shell corporations, the city alleges in a lawsuit filed filed last week.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration has started seizing 46 of the trucks, which racked up more than 22,000 violations from 2009 to 2017 for running red lights, parking in front of fire hydrants, blocking crosswalks and other offenses, officials say.

"For years, these owners have ignored public safety laws and have driven dangerously in one of the busiest areas of the City," de Blasio, a Democrat, said in a statement. "This seizure marks the end of the road for these scofflaw ice cream vendors."

The city says its Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit targets the worst culprits who had more than $10,000 in debt. A court order bars the owners from transferring their trucks with outstanding summonses and forces them to pay damages to the city, according to city officials.

More than 98 percent of the trucks' tickets were issued in Midtown Manhattan's bustling core, from 34th to 59th streets between Third and Eighth Avenues, the lawsuit says.

The owners would move their trucks' registrations from one corporation to another after they were hit with tickets, city officials say. That confounded the city's efforts to enforce the fines because the company that owed the money no longer owned the ticketed truck, according to the lawsuit.

The Department of Finance also discovered that the debtors didn't have bank accounts and that information leading back to the companies didn't exist when the agency tried to get in touch with them, the Mayor's Office said.

"The City’s investigation has untangled this web of fraudulent transactions and the Court has allowed us to take an initial step towards recovering the money owed to the City, with interest, and damages, and to permanently enjoin Defendants from again putting profit over public safety," Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter, the city's top lawyer, said in a statement.