{"id":27649,"date":"2025-11-04T00:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T00:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/27649\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T00:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T00:41:07","slug":"nyc-bounty-hunters-making-almost-1m-apiece-reporting-idling-trucks-are-professionals-live-in-posh-enclaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/27649\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC ‘bounty hunters’ making almost $1M apiece reporting idling trucks are professionals, live in posh enclaves"},"content":{"rendered":"

The street snitches who have raked in up to nearly $1 million apiece reporting idling trucks<\/a> to the city are lawyers, doctors and residents of posh enclaves \u2014 enjoying the lucrative perks of a program that targeted even mobile COVID testing trucks during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Among the people profiting the most off the Big Apple\u2019s Citizen Idling Complaint Program is Patrick Schnell, who records show has made $582,800 since 2019 by filming trucks idling for more than 3 minutes, then sending his clips to the city and collecting checks worth up to 50% of the vehicles\u2019 ensuing fines.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s just a side hustle for Schnell, who lives in leafy Boerum Hill, Brooklyn \u2014 and is a pediatrician with a long resume from high-powered medical groups such as Pfizer. <\/p>\n

City pediatrician Patrick Schnell has earned $582,800 through the Citizen Idling Complaint Program since 2019, Big Apple records show. William Farrington<\/p>\n

As part of his street-reporting schtick, Schnell appears to have an X account<\/a> where he posts footage of cars and drivers who have obscured their license plates or parked illegally.<\/p>\n

Schnell\u2019s estimated half-million take from the complaint program only places him at the bottom of its top-five earners.<\/p>\n

He protested to The Post on Sunday that the amount of money the city says it has shelled out to him \u201cis not the money I have received,\u201d before adding, \u201cIt\u2019s hard work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manhattan resident Ernest Welde has meanwhile brought home a staggering $895,737 under the program since 2019 \u2014 more than $100,000 per year \u2014 while working as an environmental lawyer by day and living on a hip East Village street near Tompkins Square Park.<\/p>\n

Ernest Welde has made $895,737 since 2019 off the program \u2014 while holding down a job as a lawyer by day. CNBC<\/p>\n

He apparently even has two apartments, with neighbors telling The Post he rents out a co-op unit and stays at his second home down the street. He was not able to be reached by phone for comment.<\/p>\n

Another top earner was Michael Streeter \u2014 with $709,975 in bounties under his belt \u2014 who lives on a leafy and secluded Brooklyn Heights street with views of the East River.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael is awesome,\u201d said neighbor Nick Burkett-Caudell, who called Streeter a hard-working \u201csweetheart\u201d and fully supports his idling complaints.<\/p>\n

Michael Streeter of tony Brooklyn Heights has made $709,975, and neighbors say he \u201cworks his butt off\u201d for it. NYC.gov<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Michael does is great for the neighborhood in Brooklyn,\u201d Burkett-Caudel said. \u201cIt does a lot for keeping the traffic moving, reducing congestion, and reducing the pollution that comes out of these trucks that are just idling for, who knows, 20 minutes, half an hour, when they could be shut off.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been doing this for years,\u201d the neighbor added. \u201cSo if he\u2019s making that kind of money doing work that benefits us all, all the best to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ephraim Rosenbaum of the Lower East Side has made $725,025 since 2019. NYC.gov<\/p>\n

Streeter also was unable to be reached by phone.<\/p>\n

Schnell told The Post that the street idling vigilantes closed ranks in their collective WhatsApp chat and decided as a group not to comment when reached by The Post.<\/p>\n

Other top city earners have been Lower Easter Siders Wanfang Wu and Ephraim Rosenbaum, who have made $748,825 and $725,025, respectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t complain,\u201d a neighbor of Rosenbaum\u2019s told The Post, shrugging at the local idling trucks. \u201cI don\u2019t understand why he would.\u201d<\/p>\n

LabQ Clinical Diagnostics\u2019 COVID-19 vans once led the city in idling violations. Helayne Seidman<\/p>\n

Several of the top earners appeared in a \u201cDaily Show\u201d<\/a> segment last year \u2014 with Streeter estimating that about \u201c20 to 30\u201d people are \u201csubmitting the bulk of the complaints.\u201d<\/p>\n

Idling for longer than 3 minutes has been illegal in the Big Apple since the 1980s, with the paid snitches and environmentalists arguing that the exhaust from vehicles pollutes the air and causes health issues for everyone.<\/p>\n

Many trucks have complicated electrical systems which require a running engine to charge their batteries, foes of the reporting program say. Robert Mecea<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t until 2019 that the law began to be taken seriously, with the Department of Environmental Protection rolling out the citizen program<\/a>. Participation has increased drastically since then, with 124,000 complaints being submitting in 2024 \u2014 up from 49,000 in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cI submit as many idling complaints as I can,\u201d Streeter said in a March City Council meeting. \u201cMy participation has made a direct and noticeable impact in my neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

But one of the top companies that anti-idlers apparently targeted in recent years was LabQ Clinical Diagnostics LLC, which operated many of the mobile COVID-19 testing units that filled New York\u2019s streets as the Big Apple was clawing its way out of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

The company wracked up 3,288 violations between 2019<\/a> and 2023 \u2014 placing it at the top of the scofflaw list at the time and suggesting the anti-idlers had a field day reaping cash rewards from tattling on them. LabQ has since fallen from the top of the leaderboard and been replaced by ConEd\u2019s 22,898 violations, Verizon\u2019s 13,544, and Amazon\u2019s 10,949, city records show.<\/p>\n

Streeter appears here at work filming an idling truck. CBS<\/p>\n

Some critics of the citizen reporting program said the idling situation is often not so simple as the resident enforcers think \u2014 and that vital city services that New York depends on are suffering because of it.<\/p>\n

Idling engines are often used to charge the batteries that run onboard systems including vehicles\u2019 electric ramps \u2014 not to mention refrigeration systems, power systems and computers that ConEd, COVID testing units and basic delivery trucks all depend on to keep New York ticking, according to Zach Miller of the Truckers Association of New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a kind of lack of understanding that there is an operational need for these trucks to be idling at times,\u201d Miller told The Post. \u201cWithout the engine running, the liftgate is not going up and down, not after 15 deliveries that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The DEP has even damned the problems of its own program<\/a>, with Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala testifying before the council in 2024 that some vigilantes repeatedly committed fraud by submitting the same video multiple times and claiming different violations in each, or outright fabricating reports.<\/p>\n

Some citizens have even attempted to assault people while going after their bounties, Aggarwala said.<\/p>\n

Local politicians have decried what the program has become and vowed to reform it, with Queens City Councilman and Environmental Committee leader James Gennaro declaring, \u201cThe days of the six-figure bounty hunters are over.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program has become an occupation,\u201d he said. \u201cThe program was not intended to be an occupation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The street snitches who have raked in up to nearly $1 million apiece reporting idling trucks to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[4663,7003,57,9,24,63,13896,13926,134,136,135,16733,58,5183],"class_list":["post-27649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-department-of-environmental-protection","tag-fines","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-parking","tag-pollution","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-trucks","tag-us-news","tag-vigilantes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}