Reported by Matt Troutman

These Uber drivers took passengers for a $40 million ride.

A pair of fraudsters sold hacked smartphones and fake apps — including one dubbed “Screwber” — to more than 800 Uber drivers as part of a scheme that conned customers into paying bogus “surge pricing” fares, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Eliahou Paldiel, 52, of Queens, and Carlos Arturo Suarez Palacios, 54, were arraigned Wednesday on federal wire fraud and money laundering charges in Brooklyn federal court.

The pair reaped more than $1.5 million for themselves out of $40 million in ill-gotten fares from the shady drivers, and even bragged about the upcoming flow of cash at the scheme’s outset in 2018, according to court documents.

The scheme worked by having Uber passengers pay fraudulent “surge” fees — which the rideshare company charges when demand is higher in a certain geographic area — to drivers who’d effectively jumped the line to receive them, prosecutors said.

Paldiel and Suarez made that possible by selling drivers hacked smartphones for $600 a pop with a suite of three illicit apps, documents state.

Those apps included “Screwber,” a program that allowed drivers to see prospective Uber riders’ destinations and fares before they accepted the rides, according to the documents.

Read full report: https://nypost.com/2024/08/28/us-news/screwber-scheme-reaped-40m-in-bogus-surge-fares-for-hundreds-of-shady-uber-drivers-feds-say/