Metro

Livery cab company hogs parking spots near his Queens garage

Scott Sanders

Scott Sanders (Francesca Andre)

HOLY WAR: Livery cabs from a company owned by Scott Sanders (right) take up all the spaces on a block of 48th Avenue near the House of Prayer St. Mary Church in Woodside, Queens. (
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An ex-con cab-company owner who is awaiting trial in a $10 million insurance scam has another sin to answer for: hogging all the parking spots outside a church near his Queens garage.

Scott Sanders, owner of the livery fleet Sensational Services LLC, regularly ditches his cabs on the streets surrounding House of Prayer St. Mary of Woodside — making it nearly impossible for the faithful to attend services, neighbors and police sources said.

Sanders, 43, keeps them there for weeks on end, police said.

“They’re keeping me from going to my own church!” fumed Carol Terrano, 78, who’s been going to St. Mary for 50 years.

“For me to drive up there and not find a parking spot, I don’t go into church with the proper frame of mind. I go to church angry!”

Pastor Noel Moynihan said Sanders’ cabs are a terrible nuisance for older and disabled churchgoers, many of whom must park blocks away.

“It’s just constant. Every space is taken up,” he fumed.

On any given day, there could as many as 25 of Sanders’ cars parked on city streets that the businessman uses as his “personal parking lot,” a police source said.

Complaints from the community have been going on for more than five years, the source added.

“Often, it’s a game of Whac-A-Mole, where he just moves his cars around to avoid getting ticketed,” Deputy Inspector Donald Powers, the commanding officer of the 108th Precinct, told The Post. “Or we tag and tow his cars and he just pays the fines, and we’re back to square one.”

Police and Buildings department officials and other city agencies have thrown every summons possible at Sanders, Powers said.

Sanders racked up a stunning $100,000 in violations in a single day last summer — to no avail, Powers said.

But salvation for the congregation may be a sentencing away. Sanders, who is out on $2 million bond, will be tried this spring in Manhattan federal court on charges of running a nine-year, $10 million scam in which he allegedly told insurance companies his cars were stored and operated upstate, where premiums are cheaper, when they were really in the city.

Reached by phone, Sanders acknowledged he was awaiting trial but denied running the taxi operation.

“I think you have the wrong person. In fact, I know you do,” he told a reporter from his home in Saddle River, NJ.

Several of his employees were shown a picture of Sanders and told The Post he was the owner.

Additional reporting by Bruce Golding