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Bloomberg
With a flat fee of $70 for trips into Manhattan and a guaranteed stream of passengers, a ride to and from New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport is one of the more lucrative journeys for the city’s cab drivers.
But federal prosecutors say two 48-year-old Queens men found another way to profit from the crowd of taxis waiting long hours for passengers at the airport, conspiring with Russians to hack the dispatch system and allow drivers to cut ahead in line for a $10 payment.
The two men, Daniel Abayev and Peter Leyman, were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions for hacking into the system from November 2019 to November 2020.
Prosecutors said the pair worked with Russian nationals to access the system through various methods.