Saturday night after drinking and partying a bar on Broad Street, a young woman asked the bar to call her a cab. According to the investigation report, the woman says she was picked up in a Checker Cab. She gave the driver her address, then passed out in the back seat. What she didn't know: the driver wasn't an employee or contractor with the company.
"A lot of people, they see the cab outside, they jump into the cab," said one cab driver. "They're drunk; they think that's their cab."
The woman told investigators she woke up on the way home and saw the cab driver on top of her with his hands up her dress. She quickly pushed the driver away. He got back in the driver's seat and drove her home. When she called Checker Cab, dispatch had no record of her call from the bar.
"We got three calls," said Pete Rodriguez, owner of Checker Cab Augusta. "They were to pick up soldiers to take them to The Playground. And I believe we got one call to take them back to Fort Gordon."
Rodriguez says there's an imposter driving around in a vehicle similar to theirs. Investigators say he's picking up different women and trying to commit sex acts on them.
"It's not the first time that somebody's impersonated," Rodriguez said.
Since impersonating a cab driver is so common, I called a cab myself to figure out to how tell a real Checker Cab from a fake. A driver's business and "hack" license should be visible to the passenger. Decals are sticker ed inside and outside of the car. And Checker Cabs will have records from dispatch of your pick-up request.
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