Photo by available_photons

As the D.C. Taxicab Commission cracks down on regulations, hundreds of cabs are being taken off the streets. The commission has filed complaints against six companies who they say have been operating used cars with rolled back meters by hundreds of thousands of miles.

In one such instance, Icon Cab service placed a 2011 Toyota Camry Hybrid into service with an odometer reading of 90,000 miles, according to charging documents. But a CarFax report obtained by the commission documents its last reading as 298,970 miles. This mileage violates Title 31 of the DC Municipal Regulations, which says that a vehicle with more than 100,000 miles can’t be placed into service. The report also found that the Toyota was used as a taxicab in New York, tracking 68,847 miles per year. But under the same regulation, the maximum mileage for a taxicab is 45,000 miles per year.

Akram Butt, who co-owns four of the companies—Empire, Midway, People, and D.C. Flyer—told WAMU, which first reported the suspensions, that he did nothing wrong. “We have bought these cars from public auctions and we put them into the fleet after they passed inspection through a D.C. inspection station and the D.C. Taxicab Commission signed the papers at the moment we registered,” Butt said.

Anacostia Cab Company is the sixth company being charged. Each of them has received orders of immediate suspension and notices of proposed revocation.