Appeals Court: MetroCard Tampering to Sell Swipes is Forgery

Courtesy Atomische's Flickr.

Yesterday New York's highest court upheld the felony forgery conviction of a man who was arrested in 2005 for "selling swipes" to subway riders using MetroCards altered with a simple bending technique. How simple? Well, Judge Victoria A. Graffeo tells you pretty much exactly how to do it in the 12-page decision [pdf], which explains how defendant Jonathan Mattocks would bend discarded MetroCards in such a way that the turnstile computers were unable to read one of two magnetic fields on the cards, resulting in a "free" ride.

Mattocks (not pictured), who was arrested in 2005 and had a number of transit system priors, has done two years in jail and been released while his appeal wound its way through the courts, the Daily News reports. (While he was being booked, Mattocks warned officers that he would be out of jail in three months, and suggested they "should just shoot me in the head, because I'm going to kill you.") His lawyers had futilely argued that his crime was a misdemeanor, not a felony, because "the damage does not create value on a worthless card, it merely prevents the turnstile computer from determining that the card has no value."

As of 2005, fraudulent MetroCard use was costing the MTA approximately $16 million per year. Since then, NYC Transit has tinkered with the turnstile computers to make card-bending less effective, but a spokesman tells the Times there were almost 250,000 instances last year of invalid cards being used to gain free rides. At least it's still better than the old days of token sucking. For the uninitiated, token sucking, according to this 2003 Tunnel Vision article, involved jamming the token slot with a matchbook or a gum wrapper, then waiting for a would-be rider to deposit a token, slam against the locked turnstile, and walk away.

Then from the shadows, the token sucker appears like a vampire, quickly sealing his lips over the token slot, inhaling powerfully and producing his prize: a $1.50 token, hard earned and obviously badly needed... In an interview with a reporter for The Los Angeles Times in the early 1990s, one token sucker acknowledged the depths of his desperation. ''Hard times makes you do it,'' he explained, adding: ''Anyways, I've kissed women that's worse.''

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By John Del Signore in News on May 1, 2009 3:02 PM

Comments [rss]

Barbj8

I don't know if this works, but it's on the Internet so it must be true, right?

http://www.poormojo.org/pmjadaily/archives/001787.php

felixthecat2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg2xKaUm_b8&feature=related

felixthecat2

This guy is a riot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg2xKaUm_b8&feature=related

calcetines

..."a spokesman tells the Times there were almost 250,000 instances last year of invalid cards being used to gain free rides."

How do they determine this number?

jaycjay

When this technique is used, it can be measured. They have the data on every swipe, and the values in the two fields on the cards when they're swiped. A little data mining could identify any instances of the same card being used twice in a row with identical stored values.

whitecastlerock

Must be the same bean counter who discovered their latest deficit

Wza

oomph!

haha!

citizenerased

Could do with a picture showing where to fold the metrocard. I'd love to learn how to get free rides.

jaycjay

Doesn't work very reliably any more. Have you noticed that only in the past could of years when you make the last swipe on a value-based card you'll get "Swipe card again at this turnstyle?" When you do that, it writes the second field. That's the software change mentioned in the article.

Reflect

Take a bite out of truth with this article.

http://www.engaged-zen.org/articles/Darrow-Crime.html

Reflect

So overblown. Class D for trying to survive? I know doctors in white coats that

cheat people out of way money. And they survive just fine.

jaycjay

Little doubt he was charged this way specifically in response to the threat he supposedly made about being out in three weeks, and supported by the fact that he'd been arrested for the same thing before. It's not likely that many people arrested for selling swipes will be charged this way in the future, though that charge now can be used as a threat by prosecutors.

Usually it's charged as a Class B misdemeanor under a law that specifically targets "theft of certain transportation services" and specifies bending a fare card as being among the definitions. The defense contention here was that bending a card doesn't fit the definition of forgery, but that wouldn't be an issue under the usual misdemeanor charge.

jaycjay

"upheld the felony fraud conviction"

Not fraud; forgery. Specifically the charge was criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree, which is a class D felony.