MTA board member skewers LIRR for keeping workers caught in phony ID scam on the job: ‘Unconscionable’

An MTA board member torched Long Island Rail Road leadership Wednesday for not firing dozens of workers caught in a brazen scheme to pad their hours.

Board member James O’Donnell skewered LIRR president Rob Free after learning in media reports that dozens of accused scammers still had jobs after they were outed in a scam that saw phony ID cards used to get paid when employees weren’t working.

Some of the alleged con artists had reportedly been raking in mounds of overtime before they were busted, he said.

“To me, those people will continue to reap the benefits of their behavior,” O’Donnell fumed of the alleged scheme, which was exposed in a scathing report from MTA Inspector General Daniel Court.

“That is unconscionable.”

Court called for the IG to brief the board in person, as he revealed he only heard about the workers still being on the job in local news reports.

“This was hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars that was stolen right under our noses,” he said.

“I’m tired of just reading about this in the newspaper secondhand — so I would like the inspector general to come in and brief the entire board on the entire investigation,” he demanded. 

The alleged scheme involved workers using machines to clone cards — with some brazen fraudsters creating the phony badges in a locker room and inside personal cars on LIRR property, the report found.

Workers then sold the fake cards — many of which were stashed in unlocked lockers and even a refrigerator on an LIRR property — for as much as $40, the IG said.

The IDs were then used so the workers could be paid while offsite, with one freeloading employee supposedly even working another job on the LIRR’s dime, according to the report.

Several of the implicated employees were even among the LIRR’s top overtime earners, pulling in up to nearly triple the OT of their honest colleagues — including one foreman who made more than the railroad’s own president last year, according to Newsday. 

President Free attempted to dispel the hostility and insisted the railroad is working through disciplinary proceedings, explaining that is why a majority of the employees have not yet been fired or punished.

Free said that of the 36 workers involved in the scam, 13 of them had quit before the investigation officially started.

One employee has since been fired and six employees are having hearings, he added.

Despite the inspector general referring the case to multiple district attorneys, no criminal charges were filed, largely because the LIRR had no cameras or biometric logs to prove who swiped what card when, prosecutors explained. 

But O’Donnell demanded repercussions be handed down from the MTA regardless of criminal charges. 

Janno Lieber, CEO of the MTA, assured O’Donnell the board would soon get the internal briefing on the investigation he requested. 

“We’re going to have that briefing,” he said.

“But the disciplinary process has to run out for the agency to take any action.”