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Ghost fleet: How New York City lost control of the tow truck industry

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Liam Quigley

Published Feb 11, 2026

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A tow truck towing a white sedan.

 

Liam Quigley

By

Liam Quigley

Published Feb 11, 2026

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Filippo Bonura should not have been behind the wheel when he crashed a black Chevy Silverado into an 88-year-old man crossing a quiet residential street in Queens.

When police arrived around 5 a.m. on July 29, 2023, Chung Lun Shao sat bleeding on the stoop of a Middle Village apartment building. The truck was parked nearby, its hazard lights illuminating the pavement.

“Thank God I wasn’t going fast,” Bonura said, according to prosecutors. “I just tapped him with the truck.”

But Bonura had a troubled driving record. Prosecutors said his license was suspended at the time of the crash. And although the vehicle was registered as a tow truck, it was not authorized to operate in New York City. Bonura had previously faced numerous charges for unlicensed towing, according to public records.

Shao died a month later at a hospital from his injuries, which included a brain bleed, fractured pelvis, broken ribs and a punctured lung, prosecutors said. Bonura was charged with failure to exercise due care, aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle and driving without a license.

Bonura’s attorney in the case, Felipe Garcia, said the crash “had nothing to do with his work as a tow truck driver.”

But the crash was a sign of a bigger problem.

Shao’s death came amid a dramatic shift in the city’s tow truck industry. The pickup was part of a growing fleet of hundreds of unlicensed tow trucks that has nearly eclipsed the number of authorized tow trucks in the five boroughs as the city has dialed back enforcement.

How we identified hundreds of unlicensed tow trucks

The size of New York City’s fleet of unlicensed tow trucks had never been reported until now.

A Gothamist analysis of speeding and red light camera data reveals the number of unlicensed tow trucks in the city has increased from 54 in 2021 to at least 712 today. Meanwhile, the number of licensed tow trucks has fallen from 995 in 2021 to 764 today.

The increase in unlicensed trucks coincides with a shift in NYPD policy starting in 2020, when police brass instructed officers to stop responding to less serious car crashes. Two years later, leadership ordered the rank and file to stop seizing unlicensed tow trucks, citing City Council legislation that reduced harsh penalties on local businesses.

Bob Holden, a former city councilmember from Queens who represented the area where Shao was killed, said the changes in NYPD protocol have only encouraged unlicensed tow truck operators.

“They're speeding through our neighborhoods, running red lights at a ridiculous pace,” Holden said.

The NYPD said that it still responds to many crashes, including ones where cars need to be towed, and that police officers can still ticket unlicensed tow trucks when they spot them. A police spokesperson said the NYPD launched a new crackdown on city highways in the last two years in response to mounting complaints about unlicensed towers, resulting in 672 summonses.

But the small city agency meant to protect consumers from overcharges and unscrupulous business practices by towing companies has struggled to keep up with the surge of unlicensed operators. The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has a team of just 62 inspectors who must also monitor tens of thousands of businesses across dozens of industries.

Many unlicensed tow truck drivers — who are known in the industry as “chasers” — race to be first on the scene of a crash. They gather intel by listening to police radio scanners or getting tips from first responders, according to a review of criminal cases involving the tow truck industry, as well as interviews with insiders.

To chasers, each wrecked car is an opportunity to tap into a lucrative market of insurance payouts and junk fees, consumer advocates said. The more valuable the damaged car, the greater the potential return.

But that competition for wrecked vehicles comes at the expense of street safety. Unlicensed tow trucks have amassed more than 3,100 red light and speeding tickets over the past year. On average, each unlicensed truck received around four citations since January 2025, while the top 100 trucks with the most tickets averaged 19 citations each.

The truck Filippo Bonura was driving when he crashed into an 88-year-old man in Middle Village.

Liam Quigley

Fatal crashes involving both licensed and unlicensed tow trucks have left at least 15 people dead since 2010, according to a review of news coverage and official records. And competition among tow companies has erupted into violence over territory, with at least five shootings related to towing companies since 2021. City officials, including Holden, say they’ve faced intimidation and threats from members of the industry when they’ve attempted to enforce the law.

“ They fight for cars,” said Carl Peterson, an expeditor who helps tow truck companies with licensing paperwork. “It all depends who gets there first. Then it all depends what neighborhood you're in. It's like all politics with them.”

Yet regulation of tow trucks remains relatively lax. Occasional crackdowns by the police and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection have done little to rein in the industry.

In a statement, Department of Consumer and Worker Protection spokesperson Sophie Ota defended the agency’s efforts to regulate the industry.

“We are using every enforcement tool at our disposal to stop the numerous schemes tow truck companies use to violate DCWP’s laws and rules,” she said.

Stealth tow rigs

Police described Bonura’s vehicle as a pickup truck after the fatal crash in Middle Village. But the Silverado had DMV-issued plates showing it was registered with the state as a tow truck.

And yet the vehicle still wasn’t authorized to tow in the city. The truck lacked a small metal medallion issued by the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. Records show the vehicle had never been licensed with the agency.

Public records show the Silverado had racked up 13 speeding tickets in the four months before the crash. Speed cameras issued the truck 13 more violations in the following seven months, though it is unclear whether Bonura was driving the vehicle at the time.

Gothamist used the addresses associated with the fines, as well as parking tickets, to locate the truck parked on a Ridgewood sidewalk in March 2024.

The Silverado was modified with a key piece of equipment — a stealth towing rig mounted under the truck bed, hardly noticeable to a casual observer. Mentions of the device were absent in reports from police and prosecutors in Shao’s case.

Stealth tow rigs have become increasingly popular in New York City's towing industry.

Rhe Civitello / For Gothamist

The rig’s manufacturer advertises its clandestine design and ability to tow a car “in as little as 35 seconds.” Some models allow a tow truck driver to operate a rig without having to exit the pickup. The equipment isn’t illegal in New York City, but it is favored by unlicensed operators who have transformed the local towing industry. One Instagram account advertising installation services for the stealth rigs shows hundreds of the devices installed on tow trucks in New York since 2015. “Make a million $$$,” one post reads.

A representative for a leading manufacturer of the devices, including the one on Bonura’s truck, said New York City has been among its most lucrative markets in the past few years.

“We offer hidden wheel lifts so they're easier to get into the smaller streets and into the parking garage. I know repossessions have definitely risen as well, so it's easy money,” said Carlie Black, an office manager with Lift and Tow based in rural Pennsylvania. She said that the company is aware of wreck-chasing but doesn’t condone the practice.

“ We just know that it's highly illegal and we do not recommend any of our customers to do chasing,” she said.

The rising number of unlicensed tow trucks follows a long history of reckless driving within the city’s towing industry.

In a high-profile incident in 1992, a tow truck driver whose license had been suspended 50 times was racing to the scene of a crash at more than 80 mph when he killed a woman on Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

“We were seeing those chasers on a regular basis back in the day… These guys were racing through the streets. It was pretty dangerous,” said Sal Albanese, a former city councilmember. He helped pass legislation in the late 1980s and early 1990s that divided the city into towing zones and required NYPD officers to call tow trucks to crash scenes from a list of approved companies. Industry insiders and licensed operators say the rules are routinely flouted today.

An unlicensed fleet expands

Gothamist identified the growing fleet of unlicensed operators by comparing data on vehicles with tow truck license plates cited for speeding and running red lights to a roster of tow trucks authorized to operate in the city.

Peterson, the expeditor, estimated that a large number of licensed operators he’s worked with have given up their medallions in recent years but continue to race to crash scenes.

An unlicensed tow truck stopped on the BQE, near the scene of a crash.

Liam Quigley / Gothamist

“The guys just can't afford that insurance coverage,” he said. “They just try to get the towing [work].”

Former tow truck company owner Alicia Vaichunas said she left the industry altogether in 2018 in the face of competition from rogue operators.

“I'm doing everything right that I'm supposed to do. But then I had those companies that didn't do what was right, and they were actually making more business than me,” said Vaichunas, who worked in Holden’s office. “It's like a free-for-all.”

Data show that the number of unlicensed trucks on the streets accelerated dramatically after 2022. That year, the NYPD revoked its procedures for seizing unlicensed tow trucks, citing new City Council legislation and a prior court ruling that limited the department’s ability to impound vehicles, a police spokesperson said.

The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection assigned to regulate the towing industry has struggled to fill the gaps. Even when the agency revokes a towing license, companies can apply for a new one after three years. Its inspectors lack arrest powers and are unarmed.

Consumer protection officials assigned to the towing industry have faced threats directed at them and their families, according to agency officials. One consumer protection attorney quit after being followed by a tow truck near their home.

A history of corruption

Tow truck companies get more complaints than almost any other type of business regulated by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. The city requires licensed tow operators to maintain a pool of money to compensate aggrieved customers. There are only two other industries with that requirement: home improvement and process servers.

For years, there have been high-profile cases of body shop owners accused of inflating damage to vehicles to bilk insurance companies. Prosecutors charged more than a dozen people tied to the towing industry in 2018 with running a “violent monopoly" in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx and Long Island. The tow operators were charged with intentionally damaging customers’ vehicles to artificially inflate insurance claims, and vandalizing tow trucks belonging to rival companies.

“If you were involved in a collision between June 2015 and December 2017 and received assistance from a tow company, chances are you were an unwitting customer of an illegal enterprise that dominated New York City’s towing industry until our takedown today,” then-Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said in a release announcing the bust.

Many tow trucks now on the road are pickup trucks that have been equipped with special rigs.

Rhe Civitello / For Gothamist

Three of the defendants pleaded guilty and agreed to pay fines ranging from $1,000 to $10,000, the DA’s office said.

In 2019, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection moved to revoke nearly a quarter of tow truck company licenses, citing “widespread insurance and workers’ compensation fraud.”

“DCWP is constantly attempting to eradicate illegal behavior by tow truck company licensees by investigating ever-evolving schemes developed by individuals in the tow industry. Over the past few years, these schemes have become increasingly more brazen,” an agency attorney wrote in court documents at the time.

When Gothamist found the truck that slammed into Shao, it featured logos for No Limit, a body shop with a dozen locations in the New York City area. One branch was just 2 miles from the site of the crash.

In 2021, FBI agents visited a No Limit location in Nassau County in connection with a case against retired NYPD officer Michael Perri, the LI Herald reported. Perri was sentenced to 33 months in prison for bribing active duty officers to steer wrecked cars to his towing and repair business.

A No Limit representative declined to comment.

In a separate case, three officers pleaded guilty in a tow truck bribery scheme in 2022, with one sentenced to eight years in prison.

The towing industry was even caught up in the sprawling corruption scandals that engulfed former Mayor Eric Adams. Manhattan prosecutors said a Brooklyn towing company owner raised more than $140,000 for Adams and bribed a top mayoral aide with cash and gifts that included Mets tickets in an effort to sideline a rival towing company.

Yet the towing industry has only received sporadic attention from law enforcement since the reforms decades ago. Proposed legislation to criminalize certain towing practices in New York City has stalled at the state level.

“A mission for me”

Holden, the former councilmember, had been battling the towing industry for years by the time Shao was killed in his district.

He spent years photographing tow trucks illegally parked on sidewalks and documenting unauthorized towers showing up at crash scenes – a practice that has resulted in the politician getting into confrontations with men hanging around body shops.

He boasts that he’s logged almost 800 complaints in the 311 app on his phone, and was such a prolific complainer that the police department once assigned one of its own tow trucks to patrol his district.

"It's been like a mission for me,” he said.

Former Councilmember Bob Holden has long been a thorn in the side of the towing industry.

Liam Quigley / Gothamist

Many of his complaints included No Limit.

Holden had complained repeatedly to the NYPD about the tow company chasing wrecks, parking its unlicensed tow trucks on the sidewalk and clogging the road with cars awaiting repairs.

“I would see them, their tow trucks, constantly go through the traffic lights and they were blocking their license plate with a little banner or a piece of metal so you couldn’t read two digits,” he said.

The NYPD issued hundreds of summonses at the body shop between 2022 and 2023 and even made two arrests, according to a letter from a NYPD borough commander in Queens.

Holden said the enforcement was not well received.

In July 2022, he filmed with his phone as men he said were No Limit employees confronted him outside the body shop.

“We kept walking away,” Holden said. “And he goes, ‘I know who you are. You're Councilman Holden. You are the one that’s complaining about me.’”

Holden shared a temporary order of protection he said was issued after the confrontation. The case has since been sealed.

Holden said such confrontations underscore why the tow truck industry has escaped robust regulation. “They live above the law. You need an agency to crack down on them, and they don't,” he said.

Case dismissed

Police arrested Bonura at the scene of the 2023 crash after he struck Shao. But it wasn’t the first time he’d run afoul of authorities.

Bonura and a towing company he owned faced at least seven violations, including for using police radios and soliciting drivers at crash scenes in the mid 2000s, according to city records. His towing license was revoked in 2005.

A car crash in Downtown Brooklyn.

Liam Quigley / Gothamist

In 2017, the watchdog New York Waterfront Commission investigated Bonura's ties to organized crime, including to a member of the Bonanno family who owned a towing business while Bonura worked as a longshoreman. The commission fired Bonura from his job at the ports.

Bonura pleaded not guilty to the charges against him in the crash that killed Shao. If convicted, he could have faced up to a year in prison.

Less than a year after the fatal incident in July 2023, a judge dismissed the criminal case against Bonura on speedy trial grounds, ruling prosecutors had exceeded the allowable time to be ready for a trial, according to a court transcript. The case is sealed and the Queens district attorney’s office declined to comment.

An attorney for Bonura has said No Limit is solely liable for the crash in response to a lawsuit filed by Shao’s daughter, which is ongoing.

As he left a Queens courtroom, Bonura said to a reporter that he was no longer driving.

Bonura walked a few hundred feet from the courthouse, where a double-parked pickup idled. It had been modified with a hidden wheel lift and tinted windows. But it lacked the medallion required for towing cars in New York City.

Bonura climbed in the passenger seat of the unlicensed tow truck, which took off down Queens Boulevard.

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Liam Quigley

Liam Quigley is a reporter covering parks & sanitation for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected]

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