Queens Men Arrested In Scheme To Hack JFK Airport Taxi System: Feds

QUEENS — Two men from Queens were arrested for conspiring with Russian nationals to hack the taxi dispatch system at the John F. Kennedy Airport, the office of Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said Tuesday.

Daniel Abayev and Peter Leyman, both 48, were arrested after they hacked the taxi dispatch system by bribing, obtaining unauthorized access to the dispatch, and stealing computer tablets connected to the system between 2019 and 2020, prosecutors said.

Abayev and Leyman face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, the U.S. attorney said.

Abayev and Leyman hacked the system by bribing someone to insert a flash drive with malware into computers connected to the dispatch system, prosecutors said, and they then altered the system to skip taxi drivers to the front of the line with the help of hackers residing in Russia.

At JFK, taxi drivers are required to wait in a holding lot before they are dispatched to pick up a fare.

The 48-year-old’s charged taxi drivers $10 each time they were moved to the front of the line, prosecutors said.

The scheme involved a large group chat with threads letting taxi drivers know that Abayev and Leyman had access to the system for the day by sending messages such as “Shop Open,” prosecutors said.