Contractor admits to scheme to suck several million dollars out of commuter-rail operator; exec who allegedly helped him still facing charges

By adamg on Wed, 06/14/2023 - 8:37am

John Rafferty, 69, of Hale’s Location, NH, this week pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a scheme in which he and his alleged accomplice, Keolis Commuter Services Assistant Chief Engineer John Pigsley, stole several million dollars worth of trucks and services through bogus invoices to Rafferty's contracting company.

According to the US Attorney's office in Boston:

Between July 2014 and November 2021, Rafferty and, allegedly, Pigsley defrauded Keolis of over $4 million through a false LJ Electric invoicing scheme. Specifically, Rafferty spent more than $3 million on items allegedly for Pigsley and others – including: at least nine trucks; construction equipment including at least seven Bobcat machines; at least $1 million in home building supplies and services; and a $54,000 camper. Rafferty then recovered the cost of these items by submitting false and fraudulent LJ Electric invoices to Keolis, which also included a percentage profit that Rafferty kept for himself.

Pigsley still faces charges that he also stole several million dollars worth of copper cabling, which he then sold for scrap. Much of the cabling, allegedly, was delivered to Pigsley's Beverly home.

Topics:

Crime

The T

Free tagging:

Keolis

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Comments

LJ Electric?

By Kaz on Wed, 06/14/2023 - 9:24am.

Did they also steal their plan from "The Bear"?

Peanuts compared ….

By Lee on Wed, 06/14/2023 - 10:13am.

… to the costs of the crime of fare cheating for which it was necessary to erect fare gates at North Station which will never pay for themselves and to pay employees to let harried people through when the gates don’t work.

No fares : no fare cheating

By Bob Leponge on Wed, 06/14/2023 - 3:04pm.

Collecting fares on public transit is a spectacular waste of resources. The entire billion dollar capital cost of the latest fare collection technology, and the operating cost of collecting and accounting for fares and maintaining the system, could all be put into running buses and subways. If you funded it out of general revenue, Rich people who seldom ride the T would be slightly worse off, by a small amount of chump change; the system as a whole would be better and the public as a whole would be better off

It’s baffling how much the

By Ahab on Wed, 06/14/2023 - 4:00pm.

It’s baffling how much the state spends on those machines, the maintenance, and the overall efficacy of them. The T actually stands for Tiger with Cotton Fangs. As a T employee once told me, “you expect me to believe they got five years worth of work in 3 months, chyeaaah right”

Fares account for 24% of all revenue

By robo on Wed, 06/14/2023 - 5:00pm.

The millionaire tax starting this year bumps the income tax rate by 4% to 9% for income over $1M. Now, you want to take more and expect it to cover over $400M a year in fares?

Consider averages

By Bob Leponge on Wed, 06/14/2023 - 6:29pm.

The person who rides the T an average amount and who pays an average amount of taxes to the commonwealth is clearly better off if we get rid of fare collections and pay for the T out of taxes, because then that person’s money goes toward running buses and trains and not toward fare collection systems.

And it is not like people who don’t personally ride the T don’t benefit from it, as it reduces traffic on the roads and benefits the economy generally.

I pay a higher than average amount of taxes and I ride the T less then average, and i still support getting rid of fare collection

Millionaire tax is expected to raise $2.1-1.3B in 2023

By robo on Wed, 06/14/2023 - 8:42pm.

That leaves $900M leftover (assuming the low estimate) after covering the lost fare revenue. So, why isn’t this enough to drop all fares? They need to tax us more than they already do? Take take take

400M sounds like a lot

By Bob Leponge on Thu, 06/15/2023 - 7:50am.

400M sounds like a lot, until you bear in mind that the population of the state is 7M, which means that for 57 bucks per year we could have a fareless T system with all that money going into service instead of fare collection.

57 bucks.

You started off saying rich people should pay

By robo on Thu, 06/15/2023 - 9:05am.

Now you’re saying everyone should contribute. I’m all on board with everyone throwing in 57 bucks a year.

I still question why they can’t do this with the new additional revenue generated from the millionaire tax as I detailed above.

And how much does the fare system cost to run?

By fungwah on Thu, 06/15/2023 - 9:15am.

400M sounds like a lot of money to take in, until you start accounting for the labor and infrastructure needed to actually collect that money, to say nothing of security needed to monitor turnstiles or the value lost in peoples' time waiting for the person in front of them to pay for their bus ride.

And then the passengers who…

By Lee on Thu, 06/15/2023 - 10:52am.

… decide to go back to driving because the hassles of paying a fare have become too annoying and worse, slow service down.
Lost fares there.
It’s also still possible to ride on the commuter rail and pay less than the correct fare or nothing at all. Same as before.

psst

By cybah on Wed, 06/14/2023 - 5:23pm.

North Station which will never pay for themselves

Got some news for ya, public transit in general isn't suppose to 'pay for itself'. Its a 'public service', its not suppose to.

Ah yes but it is 'peanuts'. I'll remember this when the budget is a 'couple of million off' and poof goes late night CR.

But keep on whining about those inconvenient fare gates that more and more rail systems are installing across the globe.