Collins Avenue at dawn is a quiet blend of hues experienced mostly by tourists set on seeing the sun rise over the Atlantic. Most mornings, Idael Cejas' bright yellow cab cuts a swath through that stretch of Miami Beach landscape.

For 12 hours a day, six days a week, he cruises Collins Avenue and the beach looking for riders to cover his daily costs: $60 to rent the car, plus gas and insurance. He's been doing it for nine months, since being laid off as a property manager.

Some weeks, the 72 hours of work generates a few hundred dollars, though the earnings pick up during the winter season. Some days he loses money. There have been a lot of those days lately.

Cejas, you see, doesn't engage in an illegal practice known as ``buying the door,'' in which a cab driver pays doormen, valets and bellhops a fee in exchange for choice customers -- a fare to the airports or to the port.

It works like this: A tourist or resident asks a doorman to call a cab. If it's a small fare, they'll call for the nearest cab. But if the rider is going to the airport or port, the doorman calls a driver who is part of an illegal network that kicks back money to the doorman. The going kickback amounts, drivers say, are $8 to Miami International Airport, $15 to Fort Lauderdale Airport and $3 to the Port of Miami.

The practice has always existed. But recently it has grown worse, Cejas says. Two major networks -- which cab drivers call the ``Brazilian and Russian mafias'' -- have spread the practice beyond hotels to condominiums. As a result, unless a driver is part of one of these ``mafias,'' Cejas says, it's difficult to get any good fares in Miami Beach.

``It's terrible,'' he says. ``The other drivers say to just accept it, that there's nothing that can be done about it. But I say, `This is the United States of America. Don't tell me nothing can be done about it.' ''

Adds Melvin Matute, a cab driver for 10 years: ``It's just getting worse and worse as these mafias become more powerful. They took over the hotels, and now they've also taken the condominiums away from us.''

At the Miami-Dade Consumer Services Department, which regulates taxi drivers, spokesperson Sonya Perez says the department is aware of the practice of ``buying the door,'' though not of any ``mafias'' being involved. She said the agency conducts regular sweeps around the county in an effort to catch the activity. If caught, a driver may be fined up to $750 and could face up to six months' suspension.

Cejas and Matute say they've called the county to report the activity and have been told they need to give the names of specific drivers who are doing it, as well as names of the hotels and condominiums where it's happening.

But the mafias have grown so big, Cejas says, that he would have to give the names of dozens of drivers and list more than half the hotels in Miami Beach. And he's not sure why it should fall on him to single out specific drivers.

So Cejas continues rising before dawn almost every morning and spends his days driving up and down Miami Beach, hoping for that elusive fare to the airport.

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