Fake Door Dash Drivers buying stolen IDs on Facebook Marketplace

00:00:00
Speaker 1: It is the John Phillip Show. Johnny's on vacation this week. He'll be back on Monday. So it's Randy Wang here and the phone number to join us is eight hundred two two two five two two two one eight hundred two two two five two two two. You can email us at Johnny Don't Like show at gmail dot com. Search for the John Phillips Show wherever you get your podcasts, and if you have it already, subscribe for free to buy substack the California Report at Randywang Radio dot substack dot com. We start with even more crazy fraud that has been uncovered in the state of California. We have told you about hospice fraud. We have told you about Uber driver fraud. We have told you about the taxicab fraud going on with the people that are getting driven one hundred miles to the methadone clinic. Well, CBS News Investigates in Los Angeles has now found and door dash fraud. What is door dash fraud? Well, I'm glad you asked. It turns out, when you're ordering food on door dash or uber eats, sometimes the person that's dropping off your food isn't the person in the profile because that profile is fake. Now, why why would somebody want a fake profile to deliver food? Maybe because they're not authorized to work in this country. Maybe they wouldn't pass a background check. For more on this, we go to CBSLA.

00:01:40
Speaker 2: She says within three minutes.

00:01:42
Speaker 3: Charles Bledsoe lives in an RV in the High Desert. He has mobility issues, so he often orders his meals and groceries through delivery apps. Last month, Bledsoe wrote us an email saying that many of his delivery drivers didn't match their profiles in the app.

00:01:58
Speaker 1: And you know what's funny, Ever since COVID with the option of just leave it at the door, I don't know what any of my drivers look like when I'm getting food or groceries delivered, because they just drop it right there.

00:02:10
Speaker 4: I've never even thought to check.

00:02:11
Speaker 2: I noticed the profile picture on the app showed a female named Kayla, and when the driver got here and I let him in, it was not a female and there was nobody else in the car.

00:02:27
Speaker 4: You don't look like a Kala to me.

00:02:29
Speaker 2: Car.

00:02:29
Speaker 3: Bledsoe says that driver tried to force his way into his RV, and that's when he says he showed the driver that he had a gutten.

00:02:37
Speaker 1: This guy was prepared. What was the goal here? Were you going to rob the disabled man in the RV?

00:02:45
Speaker 2: I couldn't have physically dealt with him. I think he had been able to overpower me pretty easily. And when he saw the weapon, he backed off and went back out of the motor home and he.

00:02:57
Speaker 3: Left Bloodsoe contacted door dasht for the incident, but he says all he got back was a credit for his next order.

00:03:04
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no no. See, this is the problem here. Uber doesn't want to admit that they have fake drivers, and door Dash doesn't want to admit that they have fake drivers too, So they don't want to address the what doesn't seem like that heart of an issue of verifying who the people are that are your independent contractors working for you.

00:03:29
Speaker 3: Since then, he says, he's been keeping track of how many times the drivers who arrive at his door do not match their.

00:03:35
Speaker 5: Profile, Probably about eight out of ten times.

00:03:39
Speaker 3: We decided to see for ourselves. All right, we're going to do our first order. I'm gonna go ahead and get some bagels. We spent a few hours one Friday in March, ordering from both door Dash and Uber Eats. Our producer Amy ordered alongside me and kept detailed notes.

00:03:53
Speaker 6: What's why they had a big old lunch, what time the order went in, who did the order, and where it's coming from.

00:04:00
Speaker 5: Okay, now we'll just wait and see.

00:04:01
Speaker 3: Of the eight orders we placed that day, two of the door Dash drivers did not match their profiles. That's twenty five percent if you're counting.

00:04:09
Speaker 1: So completely different people than what the app says is delivering the food. So what is this like the whole family is using one account or is this people buying stolen identities off the black market?

00:04:23
Speaker 6: So we just ordered from Jombadue and it was supposed to be a guy who looks like in his mid thirties with a beard named Arum.

00:04:35
Speaker 3: Instead it was a man much younger without a beard.

00:04:38
Speaker 5: I look deep into his eyes.

00:04:40
Speaker 1: I'll tell you right there, Wait a second, you're supposed to have a beard. You don't look at anything like this guy.

00:04:45
Speaker 5: I look deep into his eyes and it's not the same guy.

00:04:48
Speaker 3: Our last order of the day came from Juice Crafters, and once again, the driver who pulled up was not the person in the driver profile.

00:04:56
Speaker 6: Our final eighth delivery of the day was sposed to be a woman right here.

00:05:02
Speaker 5: Here's a picture. She has blonde, long hair, and.

00:05:05
Speaker 6: The person who brought us this smoothie was actually a young man.

00:05:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, not a woman.

00:05:11
Speaker 3: Dolay not her in a statement to us.

00:05:13
Speaker 1: At least we don't know. We didn't check under the hood for as much as door Dash specifically. I've never used Uber eats, but I imagine the same thing. They up charge the restaurant so much. The restaurants hate that they have to be on these platforms, But with all the money that they are making, shouldn't they be verifying who is working for them?

00:05:37
Speaker 5: Yeah?

00:05:38
Speaker 7: Not a woman.

00:05:38
Speaker 5: Dolay not her.

00:05:39
Speaker 3: In a statement to us, door Dash said account sharing is a clear violation of our policies and we have zero tolerance for it. We permanently remove the accounts identified in this investigation.

00:05:51
Speaker 1: But why did it take CBSLA to find out that you have a whole bunch of fraudulent people trying to work on your platform. Why does it take the local news doing this investigation? How do you not have an internal system?

00:06:08
Speaker 8: I ordered food ten times out of ten, six or seven times. The driver who was supposed to be bringing me the food, wasn't the person.

00:06:17
Speaker 3: Sergio Vedian has driven for Uber and Lyft for a decade. He's also part of the team behind the popular ride Share Guy YouTube channel.

00:06:24
Speaker 1: He says that, well, maybe I should give them a follow the ride share Guy. Well, let's see what the ride share Guy is. I'm always looking to follow new channels to check out new content. Ride share Guy. The ride share Guy. Wow, two hundred and thirty three thousand subscribers, and you just got one more.

00:06:47
Speaker 3: He says, they started hearing about alleged driver fraud three years.

00:06:51
Speaker 8: Ago, and then we started digging deeper because the issue is not just people stealing IDs or social Security numbers and having access to the platform as a driver or a courier. He goes a lot deeper than that.

00:07:05
Speaker 3: Avenian showed us. How right now there are dozens of Uber lift, Door Dash and Uber eats accounts for rent on Instagram and Facebook Marketplace.

00:07:14
Speaker 1: How did I know Facebook Marketplace was going to be listed in here? I am under the impression, maybe I'm wrong, that almost every transaction on Facebook Marketplace is some kind of scam. So a couple of years ago, when I finally gave in and admitted to my wife that my COVID purchase of a rowing machine might have been one of the dumbest things I ever did. I decided, okay, let me try to sell this thing on Facebook Marketplace, and every single response that I got was so obviously a scam. I ended up donating it to the LAFD Founding, which at the time I felt really good about until about a year and a half later when I saw the name LAFD Foundation in a story because they used them money from that foundation that's supposed to help firefighters get equipment for their fire stations. They used money from that charity to hire the PR firm to make sure Karen debastit and look bad in the after action report.

00:08:23
Speaker 3: On Instagram and Facebook Marketplace.

00:08:25
Speaker 8: And I can buy myself ready to Go account, So you can.

00:08:29
Speaker 1: Go on Facebook Marketplace and buy a stolen identity. You don't even need to go to MacArthur Park. You can buy an account for a couple one hundred dollars that then you can log into and you can start driving for Door Dash, driving for Uber, and you wonder, well, who exactly would do this?

00:08:50
Speaker 8: And I can buy myself ready to go account to either drive uber lift or deliver, so I don't have to steal anybody's idea to work has been done already. I'll just pay.

00:09:02
Speaker 4: We already have.

00:09:02
Speaker 1: Everyone's identity has already been stolen fifteen hundred times. And now there is an online marketplace on Facebook where you can buy an account and you can start driving.

00:09:13
Speaker 8: The middleman few hundred dollars and I'm delivering or driving passengers.

00:09:18
Speaker 3: And why do you think it is the people are buying?

00:09:20
Speaker 1: You know, I would love to see a breakdown because there's so many scam stories, so many fraud stories, how many people like what is the percentage of our population that is making money by scamming either somebody or the government or both.

00:09:34
Speaker 3: And why do you think it is the people are buying or stealing these identities rather than getting cleared of themselves.

00:09:40
Speaker 8: Well, because they're not able to.

00:09:42
Speaker 1: Mean you're talking about people with criminal records, people maybe with bad driving records, or maybe have awful insurance. I'm sure there's got to be some kinds of requirements in order to be a professional driver for one of these apps, meaning.

00:09:56
Speaker 3: They likely wouldn't pass a background check.

00:09:59
Speaker 1: Or they're not legally allowed to be working in this country. There's a whole lot of reasons here.

00:10:05
Speaker 8: Is the consumer safe right, and that's the question for me. And the magnitude of these illegal accounts floating out there, fake accounts we call it is also hurting the existing drivers who got on these platforms legally with their own paperwork, and it saturates the marketplace right and they earn less.

00:10:27
Speaker 5: This one is for DoorDash.

00:10:29
Speaker 1: There is a lot of competition out there and these jobs that are going to be replaced by robots like that.

00:10:35
Speaker 5: So this one is for DoorDash.

00:10:37
Speaker 3: We reached out to several of these ads and within minutes got a live response.

00:10:41
Speaker 4: Oh boy, they're going undercover.

00:10:43
Speaker 3: Now got a live response.

00:10:44
Speaker 6: It says, need a food delivery account to start earning fast.

00:10:49
Speaker 5: You don't need any type of forms to start working. I can get you working by today.

00:10:54
Speaker 1: And again, why is it CBS News investigates that is finding this.

00:11:00
Speaker 4: How is it?

00:11:01
Speaker 1: We are we just in a situation where these massive tech company platforms do not care when their platforms are used for nefarious purposes. This is true whether you're talking about Uber and door dash, when people are buying fake accounts to ride and drive for their platform, or you're talking about Amazon knowingly or unknowingly platforming people to sell stolen goods. You all remember when Rob Bonta made the big bust of the beauty shop down in or and San Diego County where this couple had been paying people to steal from Altas and Sophoras for years and years and years, and then they would sell those stolen products on an Amazon storefront. And they did it for like a decade and Amazon didn't know.

00:11:51
Speaker 5: Don't wait for approvals or background.

00:11:53
Speaker 1: Chop or they just don't care. Heck, Amazon sells on their website the tools you need to break into peace people's houses. Wi Fi jammers? Why why are you able to buy a Wi Fi jammer on Amazon?

00:12:06
Speaker 5: Don't wait for approvals or background checks?

00:12:09
Speaker 3: This one, written in Spanish, says open a door, Dash and Uber Eats account. We asked how does it work, to which the seller replied, you need an ID and social Security number to open an account. We then asked, do I have to pass a background check? The seller responded, I can help you with that.

00:12:27
Speaker 1: Oh boy, how many people are on these platforms that should not be on these platforms.

00:12:34
Speaker 3: He also said, if you don't have a driver's license. It's not a problem.

00:12:38
Speaker 1: This is why I like weimo. I know the robot is a robot, not stealing anybody's identity.

00:12:45
Speaker 7: We got to keep asking questions. We keep have to digging in.

00:12:48
Speaker 3: Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingle from Michigan has been pressuring ride share companies to improve safety for passengers. She saw our report on Uber drivers stealing in the identities of others.

00:12:58
Speaker 1: And you know why this is extra and important, specifically for Uber, not so much for door Dash. There is going to be a measure that you're going to vote for on the ballot in November that is going to increase security standards for how Uber screens their drivers. Because I believe, and don't quote me on this, but I think the campaign they're doing is every eight seconds, somebody is assaulted in an Uber. So maybe that statistic is because there's a lot of people who would not pass a background check that are driving on these platforms.

00:13:33
Speaker 3: She saw our report on Uber drivers stealing in the identity.

00:13:36
Speaker 1: I know it could be really hard to get a job when you're just out of prison, but I thought that's the whole point of the Ambassador program to hire the unemployable to do nothing.

00:13:46
Speaker 3: She saw our report on Uber drivers stealing in the identities of others, and she says that prompted her to reach out to the company, demanding answers and accountability.

00:13:55
Speaker 7: And I'm looking at what we can do so that we ensure people who having packed ground checks are the people that they say they are as background checks are being conducted.

00:14:05
Speaker 3: Do you think ultimately that's going to take perhaps ride shares actually meeting face to face with the people who they're allowing to drive people around.

00:14:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, shouldn't that be the most simple thing for you know how difficult it is to get a job, how many different series of interviews you have to go through just if you want to go work at McDonald's. But when you want to apply for one of these platforms, they don't even do like a FaceTime verification to make sure you are who you say you are, yes.

00:14:36
Speaker 7: And checking ideas. And it's a serious issue that's got to be addressed.

00:14:41
Speaker 3: But even that wouldn't stop the leasing of accounts off of online marketplaces.

00:14:45
Speaker 1: And seriously, Facebook marketplace. We have all this technology AI is at our fingertips. We can make up images, we can generate entire movies. Facebook doesn't have safeguards to make sure people on their platform aren't selling stolen identities. Unacceptable.

00:15:07
Speaker 7: This is the first time that I'm aware of it, and I will be immediately asking questions. I think everybody's vulnerable, and we've got to find a way to know that the person whose background check is being done is actually the person that's going to be driving that vehicle.

00:15:22
Speaker 1: So there you go, just the latest crazy fraud story out there. People are going on Facebook Marketplace and buying accounts to drive for door Dash.

00:15:34
Speaker 4: Why oh why?

00:15:35
Speaker 1: Because they would not qualify to be a legitimate driver for door Dash. And it sure seems like these platforms, whether it be the driving platforms themselves, door Dash, and Uber, they don't care. The platform that is facilitating the selling of stolen IDs, Facebook Marketplace, they don't care. This is where we may need to start really reining in these tech companies that don't care at all how much criminal activity they are facilitating. The phone number is eight hundred two two two five two two two one eight hundred two two two five two two two. You can email us at Johnny Don't like show at gmail dot com and you can search for the John Phillips Show wherever you get your podcasts, Daniel writes in at Johnny Don't Like show at gmail dot com. Before Joe Biden was in office, Uber delivery drivers were making three hundred dollars a day. And when he opened up the borders and allowed all the South Central Americans in and all the people from Eastern Europe like Kazakhstan and Ubekistan, they came to Los Angeles and New York and flooded the market with fake accounts. Now we're lucky if we make two hundred dollars a day, and it's because they could buy these fake accounts and have special WhatsApp groups for their languages. They also rent them the ubers. So if you're ever in Los Angeles, since you see a pack of ubers hanging around Little Tokyo or any popular hotspot for deliveries, the people got them up take you percentage or also renting out the car for one hundred and twenty five dollars a week, So it's like they're getting pimped out. We have got to crack down on this. This is completely unacceptable. And yeah, partially this could be because Biden let everybody in, but these platforms should be held accountable for allowing all of this act, to all this criminal activity stealing of identities. They should not be platforming in this and somebody, to use our favorite word, should be holding them accountable.

00:17:33
Speaker 9: Accountability, accountability, accountability.

00:17:35
Speaker 1: All right, I got something nice for you right here. Seven ninety KABC welcomes Andre Levocellie to the Hollywood Ball on September fifteenth and sixteenth. Tickets are on sale now at ticketmaster dot com, but right now call on number nine at one eight at eight seven ninety five two to two two gets a pair of tickets to the show on September sixteenth. Tickets are furnished by Live Nation Good luck dialing. The phone number is eight hundred and two to two two five two two two. The email is Johnny Don't like show at gmail dot com. Make sure to check out my substack, the California Report, where I have every single story that we're talking about the YouTube video for it, so you can watch them on your own time. You can share them with your friends, your family, your social network. If you subscribe, which is totally free, you get an email when I post this around ten thirty every morning at Randywangradio dot substack dot com, and make sure to download the podcast of this show, The John Phillips Show wherever you get your podcasts, and while you're at it, subscribe also to my solo show at five o'clock every day heard on seven ninety KABC, The News Blitz with Randy Wang. So give that a check as well, cause it's, you know, pretty much the same stuff we're doing here, just more of it. I think there's one thing that we can all agree on, me and every single person who is listening to this radio show right now in southern California, the Bay Area and beyond, and that is that we've all had it to hear with the e bikes and the e biking teens have gotten completely out of control. The latest incident involving a mob of e biking teens attacking a innocent person happened in Huntington Beach. For more on this, we go to kt LA.

00:19:28
Speaker 10: A hunting and Beach man says he was attacked by a group of teens on e bikes while on the boardwalk with his wife. The victim says someone hit him in the head with a glass bottle and knocked him to the ground where mob of teens attacked.

00:19:41
Speaker 1: Now, what is going on and how is this going on in Orange County? I thought Orange County is better than La. What's going on here?

00:19:49
Speaker 5: Now?

00:19:49
Speaker 1: He is demanding, Well, you got a bunch of spoiled ass kids and parents who obviously don't want to spend time with them, so they bought them these thousands of dollars worth of e bikes, or some of them got the rebate from the California Air Resources Board to get two thousand dollars off. Now he honestly, I don't understand why you'd get one of these things for your teenager.

00:20:11
Speaker 4: Nothing good will come from it.

00:20:13
Speaker 8: Now he is demanding justice and wants those responsible to be held accountable.

00:20:17
Speaker 3: O katla's Chris Woolf reports from Huntington Beach.

00:20:24
Speaker 1: As a lot of belieping, besieged, beaten and bruised.

00:20:27
Speaker 4: Now there's some alliteration for you.

00:20:29
Speaker 11: Besieged, beaten, and bruised. A Huntington Beach man says a mob of teenagers attacked him for no reason on Saturday evening, May ninth, around eight pm.

00:20:41
Speaker 1: I wonder if they were streaming it on social media. Yet another example of how our tech companies are profiting off of criminal activity. The fact that you can live stream you beating somebody up and you make money, and the social media company makes money. That should not be allowed. And don't tell me that we cannot police that. Don't tell me. There's so many of these videos of street takeovers and the mob fights like the one that happened with a bunch of teenagers outside of First Fridays. Don't tell me there's no way to police that on social media.

00:21:17
Speaker 11: Sam l Said tells KTLA he was with his wife riding their electric scooters along the boardwalk when they noticed a large group of teenagers, a couple hundred kids on e bikes. Sam explains, stopped.

00:21:31
Speaker 4: In the whole pack of feral kids.

00:21:34
Speaker 11: Great a couple hundred kids on e bikes, Sam explains, stopped and crowding the pathway as he made his way through the obstacle ahead of his wife to try to clear some space, he was blindsided.

00:21:48
Speaker 12: I suddenly I see a bottle coming towards me and flying towards me in the sky, in the air, and it just hits me in the face and I feel it shattered.

00:21:57
Speaker 1: Somebody threw chucked a glass bottom at this guy's head for no reason. What was the easy on their turf was he had a moped and that is as cool as our e bike motorcycles.

00:22:11
Speaker 12: And immediately I'm off to by, I'm off my e scooter. I turn around and I'm trying to figure out, like what's going on and who threw a bottle and hit me in the head. And next thing I know it, I'm getting bum rushed from behind on the side, knocking me down.

00:22:25
Speaker 1: You know, I know that in Orange County made a lot of news when Todd Spitzer charged the mother of that e biking team that crashed in and killed the veteran. That's great, but you know what, let's keep going. Every single one of these parents should be charged with battery because their idiot kid beat up this guy.

00:22:46
Speaker 11: Sam says he was dazed as several boys repeatedly punched and kicked him while he was down in the sand. Cell Phone footage shows the end of the violence as one teenager intervened mean and Sam is finally able to get back on his feet. Some bystanders called nine to one one come here on Friday night on Saturday.

00:23:08
Speaker 1: Night, again, this isn't happening in La or even La County. This is happening in Huntington Beach.

00:23:15
Speaker 12: What the come here on Friday night, on Saturday night to this very spot and see what this looks like.

00:23:21
Speaker 5: It's chaos, it's terror.

00:23:22
Speaker 12: If nothing happens and things don't change, We're going to keep seeing incidents like what happened to me, but far worse. I'm eventually going to recover. But what if they did this to somebody else who may not be in the same health, the same condition.

00:23:35
Speaker 11: Sam explains he brought his family to Huntington Beach nearly three years ago, seeking a higher quality of life than they had in other parts of southern California.

00:23:46
Speaker 1: It costs a lot to live in Huntington Beach, and you expect to not have to deal with this level of riff raff.

00:23:52
Speaker 11: The emotional impact of this attack cuts much deeper than the physical blows.

00:23:58
Speaker 5: He says.

00:23:59
Speaker 11: He appreciates the Huntington Beach police, however, but what.

00:24:03
Speaker 12: Needs to happen is they need to focus on areas. When they know there's two three hundred kids loitering with no purpose other than to create terror, havoc and problems, they need to come and disperse them.

00:24:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, the nothing good will come from a pack of teenagers. I mean, how many stories have we had of the packs of wild teens that go take over the Della Mo mall and start beating the crap out of each other. We number one, parents should know where their kids are and if you've got an eed big for your kid and now they've joined an e biker gang, you should know. But also got to go after the social media companies because there is an incentive for all of this criminal activity for likes and clicks which does turn into money, whether it's TikTok or Snapchat or insta unacceptable.

00:24:54
Speaker 11: Huntington Beach Police tell us quote a juvenile involved in the incident was arrested and cited for misdemeanor battery.

00:25:01
Speaker 4: The investing his parents should be charged.

00:25:06
Speaker 11: Yeah, the investigation continues. HBPD remains committed to keeping Huntington Beach safe through proactive enforcement, education and community outreach reporting in Huntington Beach. I'm Chris Wolf KTLA five News.

00:25:24
Speaker 4: So there you go.

00:25:25
Speaker 1: Innocent bystander on the Huntington Beach pier gets beat up by a mob of wild e bike and teens and that is why you are starting to see some change at the state level. You've seen a lot of different regulations at the local level, although a lot of them don't go far enough. But one thing that is changing, and I'll give a tiny little bit of credit where credits due, this is now something that our Attorney General Bonta is cracking down on, and that is there are many different kinds of e bikes. There are the ones that just help you pedal a little faster, there are ones that have a throttle, and then there are straight up motorcycles that are either being sold as e bikes or they're taking the ones that have the throttle and they're hacking into them to turn them into e motorcycles. And new crackdowns from the state are now stopping Amazon from selling the e motorcycles altogether. For more on this, here's CBSLA.

00:26:32
Speaker 11: Let's get a story number one.

00:26:33
Speaker 1: After several deadly crashes, Amazon says it will stop selling e bikes that go faster than the state speed limits.

00:26:40
Speaker 13: Cbsla's Rick Montonez joining us live from Garden Grove, where a team died in an e motorcycle crash just last week. And Rick, you just learned about another series accident.

00:26:53
Speaker 9: Amy Chris, Yes, we heard from CHP that says a seventy three year old man in Ventura was seriously injured this weekend in what CHP is calling an E bike crash. Now, you mentioned the E motorcycle crash here that was last week on Thursday, where the thirteen year old boy died. You see behind us the memorial here.

00:27:13
Speaker 1: Completely preventable tragedy. How many more of these stories do we have to have of kids either killing somebody or killing themselves on these devices that they are not equipped to drive. That friends and the only way you stop this is the parents have to stop buying them these things.

00:27:31
Speaker 9: That friends have built. Over the last few days. Investigators again calling it an E motorcycle, there is a distinction there, which is part of why these sales from Amazon have changed. But let's talk first about this boy's crash, because the Garden Grove Police say that the crashes under investigation still, but early information suggests that the teen was riding around thirty five miles per hour when he struck the center median and crashed, falling off of that bike. Police say he was riding an E motorcycle, a different machine than an E bike because it goes faster.

00:28:05
Speaker 1: Except for the ones that you can Another thing where social media is hurting us is that you can get one of these e bikes with the throttle that's only supposed to go up to twenty eight miles an hour, and you can hack into it because it's still an electric motor so the only thing slowing it down is a governor. If you can disable the governor, they can go up to thirty forty fifty miles an hour. It's a motorcycle. Every single one of these things. You should have to have insurance, and you should have to be licensed. And I don't think anybody under sixteen should be riding any of these things. We went how many thousands of years? When did bicycles get invented in China? Thousands of years ago? We've had them for a very long time. What's wrong with using your own two damn legs to pedal?

00:28:51
Speaker 9: So friends created this memorial here starting on Friday, and it's gotten bigger over the last few days. You may also remember this incident over in Lake Forest, which is now a criminal case. Treasured Vietnam veteran and Orange County teacher Ed Ashman died two weeks after being struck by a fourteen year old boy. Prosecutors in Orange County say the team was illegally riding a powerful e motorcycle and hit Ashman while he was walking home from school. Now the boy's mother is facing charges for allowing her son to ride illegally.

00:29:23
Speaker 1: Damn right, and yes, the parents need to be held responsible. That veteran did not need to die that way, didn't need to happen. She was worn so many times that her kid's not supposed to be on that thing. That thing is a motorcycle, and she didn't care.

00:29:40
Speaker 9: So the changes made in Amazon sales.

00:29:42
Speaker 4: Is another thing that happened in Orange County. What the hell?

00:29:45
Speaker 9: So the changes made in Amazon sales in California come after Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a consumer alert, and in that alert, it says that e bikes with pedal assist are not allowed to go above twenty eight miles per hour and no more than twenty miles per hour for throttle assist bikes. Bonta says anything above that is not classified as an e bike instead is classified as a moped or motorcycle and would require a driver's license and a helmet to operate.

00:30:16
Speaker 1: This is the kind of regulation that we need. At least it's happening now, but we've got to be cracking down on this.

00:30:24
Speaker 9: E bikes are supposed to have permanent labels on them as well that specify the max speed of those particular machines, so that people know the age of which is appropriate to operate those and whether you need a license. And then of course a helmet is always advised just as a precaution.

00:30:43
Speaker 1: Shouldn't a helmet be required? I thought a helmet's required for anybody under eighteen years old on a regular bicycle.

00:30:49
Speaker 9: Even on those slower bikes. So some big changes in how these sales are handled, reporting live this morning in Garden Grove, Rickmontinez, CBSLA.

00:30:58
Speaker 1: So there you go a little bit of push in cracking down on the scoorge of e bikes in California, where Amazon is going to stop selling the ones that go faster than you should be allowing your children to go. Well, we told you about this story a while back, this bizarre story about the mayor of Arcadia and her former fiance slash campaign manager who is convicted of becoming or for being a Chinese spy. Well, we have an update for you. The mayor of Arcadia has now pleaded guilty to acting as a Chinese spy and posting Chinese propaganda. And because of her last name, we got a ton of people asking if she's my aunt. No relation in Wang is a fake name. For more, here is CBSLA op you gotta turn the music off.

00:31:56
Speaker 4: For more. Here is CBSLA.

00:31:59
Speaker 14: Stepping down tonight after pleading guilty to charges accusing her of working as an agent for China. Cbsla's Lori Perez has reaction from city officials.

00:32:10
Speaker 15: This is a stunning development and what one council member called a heartbreaking day for the city of Arcadia.

00:32:16
Speaker 1: It's one of the things about covering Los Angeles County or all of southern California, is LA eats up so much attention that all of the local media combined, whether you're talking about our radio stations, our TV stations, our newspapers, you can only cover so much. And then you find out all these wild things that are going on in some of the eighty eight small cities in LA County, like the mayor being a secret agent for China.

00:32:43
Speaker 15: Federal prosecutors say it is one part of a far reaching investigation into foreign influence on US politics.

00:32:51
Speaker 5: I'm just your reaction to this sentence. I don't have the comments raight now.

00:32:54
Speaker 4: Thank you.

00:32:55
Speaker 15: Back in February, then Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang.

00:32:58
Speaker 5: Didn't want it.

00:32:59
Speaker 15: No relation answer our Tom Waite's questions about reformer fiance Yowing Mike Son being sentenced to four years in prison for being a covert agent for the People's Republic of China.

00:33:10
Speaker 1: Or this is how they infiltrate us at the lowest levels of local government in a very small city near Pasadena where the racetrack is.

00:33:19
Speaker 15: PRC Today, hours after admitting in federal court to doing the same and resigning as mayor of Arcadia, her attorneys sent us a statement saying she wanted to apologize, adding events in Ms Wang's personal life, including her trust and love for apparently the wrong person who.

00:33:36
Speaker 1: Al she was the patsy in all this. He convinced her to start posting propaganda on a website.

00:33:41
Speaker 15: Timately led her astray require her to step away from public service. Federal prosecutors say from twenty twenty to twenty twenty two, Wang and Son posted Communist Party propaganda on a website they ran called us News which reported.

00:33:57
Speaker 1: This person was elected and served as mayor, and she was posting propaganda.

00:34:03
Speaker 15: To be a news website for the Chinese American community and Chinese expats. Court documents released today alleged they took orders from the Chinese government to post pro China content.

00:34:14
Speaker 16: These are all things where transparency is paramount, and the campaign that China is engaging in and enlisting agents here who are not acting overtly, really undermines our national security and it undermines the democratic fabric of our society.

00:34:32
Speaker 15: Wang agreed to plead guilty to one federal charge today as part of a plea deal, and is facing ten years in prison.

00:34:38
Speaker 4: Arcadia's city that's federal prison.

00:34:40
Speaker 15: Manager said in a statement posted on the city's website today. The charges relate to conduct that ceased after she became mayor in twenty twenty two, and an internal review shows no city finances, staff or decision making processes were involved, But council member Sharon Kwan says the damage has been done unfortunately.

00:35:01
Speaker 17: I think this has damaged public confidence.

00:35:04
Speaker 1: But I also you don't say that the mayor of Arcadia was acting as a secret agent to China. Yeah, and you wonder how many other small cities up and down the state of California, or even the country, is something like this happening.

00:35:19
Speaker 17: Believe Alcada is resilient. We can move forward, being honest, transparent, and commit it to accountability in.

00:35:28
Speaker 1: Our everybody's favorite word, Gavin. You love that word too, don't.

00:35:34
Speaker 11: You, Accountability, Accountability, accountability, Kidia.

00:35:36
Speaker 15: I'm Lori Perez CBSLA.

00:35:39
Speaker 4: So there you go.

00:35:40
Speaker 1: Originally, she said she didn't know anything about this and was shocked to find out that her fiance slash campaign manager was a spy. But guess what, turns out she knew all about it because she was also in on it in posting Chinese propaganda to a website that was supposed to be for news for expats that I guess live in Arcadia. It is a wild story. And when we once again reiterate, I am not related at all to her, Randy Wang is not a real name. My real name is Ryan Wong. And even that's confusing because I found out about five years ago that I'm not even part Chinese.

00:36:22
Speaker 4: It's a whole story