An MTA board member torched Lengthy Island Rail Highway management Wednesday for not firing dozens of employees caught in a brazen scheme to pad their hours.
Board member James O’Donnell skewered LIRR president Rob Free after studying in media experiences that dozens of accused scammers nonetheless had jobs after they have been outed in a rip-off that noticed phony ID playing cards used to receives a commission when staff weren’t working.
A number of the alleged con artists had reportedly been raking in mounds of extra time earlier than they have been busted, he mentioned.
“To me, these folks will proceed to reap the advantages of their habits,” O’Donnell fumed of the alleged scheme, which was uncovered in a scathing report from MTA Inspector Basic Daniel Courtroom.
“That’s unconscionable.”
Courtroom referred to as for the IG to temporary the board in particular person, as he revealed he solely heard in regards to the employees nonetheless being on the job in native information experiences.
“This was a whole lot and a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} that was stolen proper below our noses,” he mentioned.
“I’m bored with simply studying about this within the newspaper secondhand — so I would really like the inspector normal to return in and temporary your complete board on your complete investigation,” he demanded.
The alleged scheme concerned employees utilizing machines to clone playing cards — with some brazen fraudsters creating the phony badges in a locker room and inside private vehicles on LIRR property, the report discovered.
Staff then offered the faux playing cards — a lot of which have been stashed in unlocked lockers and even a fridge on an LIRR property — for as a lot as $40, the IG mentioned.
The IDs have been then used so the employees may very well be paid whereas offsite, with one freeloading worker supposedly even working one other job on the LIRR’s dime, in accordance with the report.
A number of of the implicated staff have been even among the many LIRR’s prime extra time earners, pulling in as much as almost triple the OT of their sincere colleagues — together with one foreman who made greater than the railroad’s personal president final yr, in accordance with Newsday.
President Free tried to dispel the hostility and insisted the railroad is working by means of disciplinary proceedings, explaining that’s the reason a majority of the staff haven’t but been fired or punished.
Free mentioned that of the 36 employees concerned within the rip-off, 13 of them had give up earlier than the investigation formally began.
One worker has since been fired and 6 staff are having hearings, he added.
Regardless of the inspector normal referring the case to a number of district attorneys, no felony prices have been filed, largely as a result of the LIRR had no cameras or biometric logs to show who swiped what card when, prosecutors defined.
However O’Donnell demanded repercussions be handed down from the MTA no matter felony prices.
Janno Lieber, CEO of the MTA, assured O’Donnell the board would quickly get the inner briefing on the investigation he requested.
“We’re going to have that briefing,” he mentioned.
“However the disciplinary course of has to expire for the company to take any motion.”
