After Stabbing of Ferry Ticket Seller, Mayor Says He Plans Crackdown on Illegal Vendors

It has taken the stabbing of one of the illegal ferry ticket sellers to get Mayor Eric Adams to take another look at the gantlet of ticket sellers who pounce on unsuspecting tourists at the southern tip of Manhattan.

On June 11, City Council members Keith Powers and Chris Marte scrapped an earlier version of a bill and introduced a new version designed to impose stiffer penalties on the companies behind the scam tickets. The new tougher version of the bill calls for potentially revoking city licenses.

“This bill introduces reforms to address long-standing issues of fraud, aggressive sales tactics, and consumer deception in the ticketing industry for tours, ferries, and other attractions,” said a statement released by the two Council members. “By shifting regulatory responsibility from individual ticket sellers to the businesses that employ or profit from them, the legislation aims to hold bad actors accountable at the top of the chain—where decisions about training, sales practices, and marketing are actually made.”

The vendor who was stabbed June 10 is also prompting Mayor Adams to take a second look after his earlier visit on April 8, accompanied by Straus News, resulted in no action.

The victim was identified as a 26-year-old from Togo and a ticket seller for NYC Tours. He was stabbed shortly after 11am after getting into a brawl with three other men. Some suspected the dispute was a turf war among the area’s many illegal ferry and helicopter ticket vendors.

Illegal vendors, dressed in purple and green jackets, regularly accost tourists by the South Ferry entrance outside the Staten Island Ferry entrance while red-jacketed scammers work the Bowling Green subway stop. The turf seems very obviously divided. You won’t find the red shirts by the South Street ferry stop, and the purple and green jackets say away from Bowling Green, leaving that entirely to the red shirts. They all hawk high-priced ferry and helicopter tickets for trips that do not actually land the tourists on Liberty Island, where the Statue of Liberty stands, or Ellis Island, but instead direct them to shuttle buses that take them elsewhere, often to Pier 78 on Twelfth Avenue, near 37th Street, or Pier 40, at the western end of Houston Street in Hudson River Park.

The biggest concentration of illegal vendors—who all have “licenses” dangling from lanyards around their necks—appear near the Peter Minuit statue near the Staten Island Ferry entrance and at the Bowling Green subway stop for the 4 and 5 lines.

All of the ticket sellers are hawking fares for unlicensed and illegal tours, aside from one tour operator authorized by the National Park Service, Statue City Cruises. But hucksters and scammers inside Battery Park have been a long-running problem, as Straus News reported back in March.

“Don’t fall for ticket scams,” Statue City Cruises warns on its website. But many tourists do, as they are set upon by an army of unlicensed ticket sellers. The only legal ticket seller does not use outdoor vendors; it is contained inside a small ticket-selling pavilion a short walk away from the big Staten Island ferry terminal. But many scammed tourists do not even get close to the only legitimate seller.

A common ploy is to tell tourists that the Statue of Liberty ferry is closed for the day.

A spokesman for the legitimate Statue City Cruises said that on the New Jersey side, where Star City also operates, business is booming, up about 10 percent this year. There are no ticket hawkers on the New Jersey side.

But it is another story on the New York side, where the only licensed operator says ticket sales are down and it sometimes counts over 80 illegal vendors a day. Even on the relatively rainy weekend of June 14-15, the spokesperson said they counted over 70 illegal ticket vendors. The city only gets a cut of the legitimate ticket sales from Statue City Cruises. “It’s a shame for NYC, because the city is losing $2 million to $3 million annually since the city gets a small piece of each ticket and with less people going through Battery Park.”

The company was sharply critical of Adams for his visit at 2:30pm on April 8, pointing out the legitimate ferry stops running by 3:30pm and fewer scammers are plying their wares as the legitimate cruises wind down operations. On the day of his visit, Adams said he did not see enough activity to warrant a crackdown. He posed with people outside the terminal, including several of the unlicensed vendors.

“The day he went to Battery Park, we spoke to numerous aides strongly advising the Mayor to visit Battery Park in the morning, but alas that did not happen,” said the spokesperson for Statue City Cruises. “This also includes us sharing more than a year of TV segments showing tourists getting scammed,” he said.

The June 14 stabbing of one of the illegal ticket vendors highlighted the menace. “It will only get worse unless the city completely clears out the park,” said the spokesperson.

The stabbing did seem to jolt Adams. In response to questions from Straus News on June 17, he said he was going to take another look. He said his failure to notice any problems in the April 8 visit may have been because ticket scammers knew he was coming.

Adams said he was reluctant to announce when he would make his return.

“One thing I don’t want to announce, because it seems like when I announce, they disappear. Somehow they communicate, ‘Eric is coming.’ . . . We want to do a surprise to go down there and find out firsthand what’s happening . . . ”

“The scams and fraud that we’re seeing in Battery Park have serious consequences for the economy in New York City,” said Council Member Powers. “Tourism is a crucial industry for our city, and if tourists can’t trust they won’t be scammed at every turn, they won’t spend their dollars here. Visitors and New Yorkers alike deserve to be protected, and to be able to trust that enforcement of bad actors doesn’t stop at the water’s edge.”

“Every year, tourists visiting Lower Manhattan are misled and overcharged by scam ticket sellers pretending to offer official Statue of Liberty tours or other attractions,” Council Member Marte said. “These scams hurt everyone—families lose their hard-earned money, legitimate small businesses lose customers, and the city loses credibility.”