AG Lynch's stepdaughter briefly jailed over fare: report
Her stepmom might be the top prosecutor in the United States, but she's still got pay for her taxi rides.
The stepdaughter of United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch reportedly was briefly locked up by New York City cops after a taxi driver complained she hadn't paid the $20 fare for an Uber-ordered ride.
The arrest of Kia Absalom, which was quickly voided after her boyfriend showed up at a Brooklyn police precinct to pay the fare, may have stemmed from her confusion over using Uber's app
Absalom, 21, booked the ride from taxi driver Hassan Almaweri on the afternoon of Dec. 28 using UberT, Uber's service for ordering rides from the regular yellow and green cabs that ply their trade on New York City streets, the New York Daily News reported Monday.
The paper noted that UberT, which charges $2 for the service, requires riders to pay with cash or a credit card — not through the app. Uber allows riders to pay fares via its app for contractors who drive their own cars for the company.
Almaweri told the Daily News that when he asked Absalom to pay him the $20 fare when they arrived at her destination, she replied, "No, I paid by the app."
"What do you mean, the app?" Almaweri asked Absalom, whose father Stephen Hargrove has been married to Lynch since 2007.
The driver said he refused to accept payment using numbers for credit cards that belonged to Absalom, but which she at the time didn't have physically in her possession. He then drove her to the 69th Precinct in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.
"I go to the police and say, 'This lady doesn't want to pay me,'" the driver told the newspaper.
Police put her into a holding cell, the News said. The paper reported that a sergeant at the precinct said that Abaslom never used Lynch's name or mentioned their relationship while she was in custody. Lynch, who has been AG since last spring, previously was the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, overseeing federal prosecutions in Brooklyn and on Long Island.
Absalom was let out of jail without any charges when her boyfriend showed up to fork over the fare, according to the News.