The New York City Sheriff’s office seized at least a dozen trucks operating for Weed World Candies for outstanding parking tickets totaling a half-million dollars, officials said Tuesday.
Some of the vehicles towed were towed because their tickets were in judgment, while others were towed just because they were parked illegally.
Twelve trucks were towed from the area of 45th Street and 12th Avenue in Manhattan Tuesday morning and officials said more were expected to be towed from an area near 38th Street and 10th Avenue later in the day.
The amount of parking ticket debt in judgment right now is $316,000, though the total outstanding debt is $504,000.
“This has absolutely nothing to do with marijuana, it only has to do with unpaid debt. Judgement debt, that’s not paid and owed to the city of New York,” said NYC Depute Sheriff Maureen Kokeas.
“The Department of Finance has communicated with these parties many, many, many times over many years trying to collect this debt, and the debt was ignored — so we went out and took enforcement action.”
The owner of Weed World, Bilal Muhammad, told NBC New York over the phone that the company “is not trying to get around paying tickets. The city makes a lot of money off of Weed World, we will make sure our debt are paid.”
A Weed World spokesperson said the company was aware of “some unpaid parking tickets” and in the process of addressing the situation.
“It’s like the responsibility was left on the company because it was really the responsibility of the contractors who didn’t make good on the tickets,” the Weed World representative said. “So they just left on the company to take that burden, that’s it.”
Weed World’s vehicles will not be released from the impound lot until the parking tickets are paid off.
