Miles scandal: car-sharing provider manipulated GPS data to save on parking fees

The Berlin car-sharing provider Miles is under investigation on suspicion of illegally avoiding parking fees. As the Berlin police announced on Wednesday, the Berlin State Criminal Police Office, the police in North Rhine-Westphalia and the Austrian police searched the offices of the provider and cooperating companies as well as the homes of the managing directors on behalf of the public prosecutor's office.

Suspicion of large-scale fraud at Miles

According to the police, there is suspicion of "gang and commercial fraud and computer fraud, gang and commercial falsification of technical records and suppression of documents". It is estimated that the state of Berlin could have suffered up to 30 million euros in unpaid parking fees.

Did Miles cheat on parking fees?

Miles confirmed the investigations. A search had taken place, "in which we cooperated fully and disclosed all requested data records and documents to the investigating authorities", a spokeswoman for the company told the business magazine "Capital". In Berlin, Miles "pays the parking fees automatically to the districts via so-called cell phone parking". Miles did not want to disclose any further information in view of the ongoing proceedings.

Conflict over parking fees

For Miles, which has developed into one of the largest German car sharing providers in recent years with vehicles in a number of cities, the investigations have brought an old conflict to a head. The company, which sees its services as part of the urban mobility offer, had repeatedly complained that in some places it had to pay the same parking fees as private car owners. Depending on the city, Miles negotiates very different models for the use of parking space.

Manipulation of telemetry data at Miles?

In Berlin, parking fees are automatically calculated by a third-party company and paid to the authorities. This is based on telemetry data in which the vehicles send their location data and the length of the parking time is transmitted. According to the police, it is now suspected that the company has manipulated some of this telemetry data in order to avoid charges.

Federal government must react

If the allegations against the company are substantiated, the German government will probably also have to deal with the case. Just a few weeks ago, the Ministry of Transport promised the company subsidies for new electric cars amounting to almost one million euros. This would then be put to the test.nullAccording to the police, "significant deviations in the reliability of the payment of parking fees" and "an unusually high number of parking fee violations" by Miles vehicles were already noticed by the regulatory authorities and the fines office in 2019. This is how the suspicion of manipulation first arose. Data carriers and documents belonging to the company and its partner companies were confiscated from the offices in question and will now be analyzed.