CABBIES PROTEST OUTSIDE LENDER OFFICE TO CALL FOR END TO MEDALLION SEIZURE NIGHTMARE
Medallion Seizures, Lawsuits, and Private Sales Continue While City Is Days Away from Implementation of Historic Guarantee Program
When: Thursday, March 3, 2022
Time: 12PM
Where: 1633 Broadway (at 51st St.)
Offices of Law Firm Vedder Price
Law firm of private equity firm O'Brien Staley Partners
While thousands of owner-drivers are days from securing life-saving debt relief, one notorious lender continues to wreak havoc. On Thursday, drivers are protesting outside the offices of law firm Vedder Price to call on their client, Minnesota-based private equity firm O'Brien Staley Partners (also known as “OSP” and DBA “OSK” under its medallion portfolio), holder of roughly 350 loans, to join the city's program to end the debt crisis and to immediately stop their seizures and threats of private sales.
In November 2021, the drivers ended their 15-day hunger strike after reaching an agreement with the City and Marblegate Asset Management, the holder of the largest portfolio at an estimated 2500 loans, on a City-backed guarantee on medallion loans restructured to no more than $170,000 plus an additional $30,000 cash down payment, effectively recasting medallion value to $200,000. PenFed, the largest of the remaining credit unions, is on board, as are a number of smaller loan funds. The largest investor at Medallion Financial Bank, KORR Value, L.P., has officially called on them to come on board. Other lenders that seek to not refinance are engaging in cash settlements. OSK remains a lone - and terrorizing - hold out.
OSK continues to repossess medallions, engage in private sales below what drivers are offering, litigate cases, added 15% default interest during COVID and requires double the monthly payment as the largest lender during post-COVID recovery. Their in-house servicer, AmeriNat routinely yells at drivers, hangs up on them, threatens them, increases medallion reinstatement settlements overnight, and works with a Repo Man charged with impersonating a Sherriff to hunt down drivers at 2AM on New York City streets.
O'Brien Staley Partners is engaged in all of this while it bills itself as an “impact investor” a good guy on Wall Street. In NYC, currently through its servicer AmeriNat, OSP is harassing low income borrowers who are exactly the clientele who should be the beneficiaries of the firm's impact investing, not its victims.
"We are determined to end this crisis and to get every loan and every lender on board. When the TLC votes on Monday (March 7th) to implement the Guarantee program, thousands of driver families will start to get their lives back, free from generational debt and life-long poverty and without fear of losing their homes and savings. Every single owner-driver deserves that same relief, that same freedom from this crisis. O'Brien Staley Partners cannot hide behind the facade of "social investments" and create a subsidiary to destroy our members' lives. The City-backed Guarantee is a financial boost for lenders. We are ready to stay out on the streets again as long as necessary, this time outside the fancy building of a white-shoe firm squeezing cabbies dry," said NYTWA Executive Director Bhairavi Desai.
The lender has paired a notorious debt collector with their in-house servicer and law firm to shake drivers down. Their playbook is as follows:
Repo Man Tony seizes medallions from drivers at their homes, in the streets and most prominently at JFK airport while drivers are waiting to get passengers. Tony, very threateningly, pulls over drivers by a cut in front of them and parking his ford crown victoria vehicle with tinted windows, preventing them from driving. He proceeds to rip the medallions off their car, forcibly removing the meter, as well as the license plates.
A couple of days after the seizure, the collection agents start calling drivers and begin threatening and harassing the driver and demanding payments between $5,000-$15,000 in order to get it back.
Law firm Vedder Price then sends letter threatening a private sale of the medallion.
When drivers are unable to pay, OSP proceeds to foreclose on the drivers and sell the seized medallions for as much as $50,000 less than what the owners-drivers are offering as a settlement. OSP is willing to take a financial loss rather than settle with drivers who have made them their riches.
O’Brien Staley Partners purchased about 400 loans in early 2019 from Signature Bank for $46.4 million. The average purchase per loan is $110,000.
Thursday's protest is just the first, the drivers pledge. A second one is already scheduled for Monday.