Jean Davis (Alex Rud)
How do you rack up $120,000 in unpaid tolls and fines — becoming the biggest scofflaw on New York’s bridges and tunnels?
“I used to take her car to the city to buy drugs,” said a contrite Peter Davis, 52, who says he’s a recovering addict and lives with his mom in an Englewood, NJ, apartment.
It’s actually Davis’ mother, Jean, 75, who is shamed on the Port Authority’s Web site as owing the most money of any scofflaw.
But yesterday, Peter admitted to The Post that he’s the one who racked up the debt, by using her Ford Focus for years to blow through tolls on numerous trips to Manhattan to get high.
“When you’re addicted like that you don’t think of he consequences. You have other things on your mind,” he said.
Thanks to Peter’s many drug junkets, his mom is in the hole for $21,365 in unpaid tolls and has accrued $102,141 in fines — a sum that continues to grow.
“If I could have killed him and gotten away with it, I would have,” said Jean, a retired data processor.
Her son shamefully admitted that for “three or four years” he would drive his mother’s car over the George Washington Bridge several times a week to score drugs.
“I knew it was inevitable. I knew there would be consequences sooner or later,” he said.
Jean said she reached a court settlement, but couldn’t remember for how much, with the PA in 2005.
But her son continued breezing through the toll booths. He stopped only when his license was revoked sometime in 2008 or 2009, Peter and Jean said.
The fines are now so back-breaking that the mother and son say they have no hope of paying what they owe.
“The ones that are owed now, I’m simply not able to pay,” said his mother.
“It’s something that’s owed and it rankles me because it is in my name. I don’t need this aggravation; I’m aggravated enough by the fact he did it. If he pays them then good for him, but I can’t do that.”
The PA’s Hall of Shame is a list of 37 companies and individuals who owe massive amounts of tolls and fines. Most of the names on the list belong to tucking and taxi companies. Jean is the top private motorist inducted into the “hall.”
The leader of the toll-evading pack in the Hall of Shame is EAN Holdings LLC, which operates the Enterprise, Alamo and National car-rental companies. That company owes $1.9 million in tolls and fines to the PA.