The Miles car rental company, which operates across 11 cities in Germany, is being investigated on suspicion of manipulating GPS data to avoid paying millions of euros to authorities in Berlin.

Miles car rental company suspected of fraud

Miles carsharing vehicles have been a staple on Berlin’s streets for a few years now, enabling moves from WG to WG at just the tap of a button for an affordable price. 

Turns out the allure might not have been worth it for the city. Miles is now being investigated on suspicion of cheating Berlin out of millions of euros worth of unpaid parking fines.

According to a report by Berliner Zeitung, police think that the start-up faked its GPS data in order to avoid paying parking fines that total between 25 and 30 million euros since 2019. 

Police raid Miles offices in Berlin

Carsharing companies in Berlin pay fees by sharing their GPS data with authorities. Employees at the Ordnungsamt in Berlin smelled a rat after they noticed a large discrepancy between the reliability of fee payments and the number of fee violations they had incurred.

The case led to Miles' offices in Berlin being raided on October 11. Two bosses at the company also had their houses searched and are now being investigated for commercial and computer fraud and falsifying records.

The car leasing company of many Berlin start-ups which moved in to dominate the market and put its old-school Berlin competitors out of business. Its main victim was Robbe & Wientjes, a Kreuzberg-based company which had been serving Berliners since 1978.

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