Some New Yorkers are quietly turning city streets into a gold mine—raking in nearly $1 million each by filming idling trucks and buses spewing exhaust. Now, City Council members say it’s time to pump the brakes on the massive payouts.
“The days of the six-figure bounty hunters are over,” said Queens Councilman James Gennaro, who chairs the City Council’s Environmental Committee. “The program has become an occupation. It was never meant to be that.”
The Citizen Idling Complaint Program, launched in 2019, allows ordinary residents to report vehicles that idle for too long—more than three minutes for trucks and one minute for school buses. The city even recruited punk rock legend Billy Idol to promote the campaign with the slogan: “Billy never idles. Neither should you.”
Under the system, citizen whistleblowers collect 25% of the fines issued by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) when cases are upheld by the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH). Those who bring cases directly to OATH can earn 50% of the fine.
With penalties ranging from $350 to $2,000 per violation—and with 95% of complaints being substantiated—the cash quickly adds up. According to city records obtained by The Post, several New Yorkers have amassed huge sums through the program:
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Ernest Welde (East Village, Manhattan): $895,737
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Wanfang Wu (Lower East Side, Manhattan): $748,825
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Ephraim Rosenbaum (Lower East Side, Manhattan): $725,025
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Michael Streeter (Brooklyn Heights): $709,975
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Patrick Schnell (Boerum Hill, Brooklyn): $582,800
The surge in citizen complaints has been staggering. Submissions jumped from 49,000 in 2022 to 124,000 in 2024, with more than 100,000 already filed this year.
Yet city officials say the reports are mostly coming from wealthier areas—like Midtown and lower Manhattan, brownstone Brooklyn, and western Queens—rather than the “environmental justice” neighborhoods originally targeted by the initiative.
DEP Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala told the City Council last year, “While we can and should pay people who do the service of reporting offenses, we do not need to make them millionaires.”
One top earner, Patrick Schnell, denied receiving the $582,000 figure cited in records. “Where did you get that number from?” he asked a reporter before insisting, “That is not the money I have received. It’s hard work,” he added, closing the door.
Environmental activists, however, argue the program saves lives.
“Air pollution is deadly—it causes cancer, dementia, asthma, and 3,200 premature deaths in New York every year,” said George Pakenham of the New York Clean Air Collective. “The DEP should make it easier, not harder, for people to report illegal idling—by fixing its outdated website, supporting non-English speakers, and hiring more staff to hold polluters accountable.”
As the city weighs reforms, one thing is certain: in New York, even the air has become a business opportunity.