3 BART employees accused of time theft
BART’s inspector general found three of the transit agency’s employees recently committed time theft by clocking in for work and collecting pay while spending most of their time at home not working.
According to the Office of the Inspector General’s investigation, the employees, who were not approved for remote work, claimed to work 10-hour in-person shifts. The employees reported for their in-person assignments, “for brief periods,” before returning home for most of their shifts.
The employees, who weren’t identified by the inspector general, collected overtime, double-time pay, paid pension benefits and vacation accruals on top of their base salary during the scheme. The investigation said one of the employees’ stolen wages cost BART at least $9,004, “but time-data patterns and other evidence support the likelihood of a higher loss.”
The inspector general’s investigation was published on Monday, the same day Bay Area lawmakers announced an effort to place a long-term tax subsidy for transit operations for BART and the region’s transit agencies.
The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office filed criminal charges in November against one employee, Alan Robert Boie, who retired after BART police confronted him with evidence of his time theft. A warrant for Boie, first identified by the San Francisco Standard, remains outstanding.
The other two individuals admitted to the time theft before BART police got involved, according to the inspector general’s investigation, and remain employed at the transit agency.
BART Inspector General Claudette Biemeret said she is concerned that time theft could be happening across the transit agency, which employs about 4,000 people, but added, “I don’t have any evidence to suggest that it’s widespread.”
The investigations were initiated by complaints from whistleblowers at BART, and were the independent watchdog’s latest discovery of employee time theft at the transit agency.
Last year, the inspector general found an employee claimed to have worked 27 days over the period of one month, reporting for work in-person for about an hour before leaving for the rest of the shift. The inspector general found evidence last year that another employee spent time inside their personal vehicle instead of working during company time.
Monday’s OIG investigation recommended that managers at BART implement procedures to better ensure that employees are performing the work they claim to be doing. The agency’s maintenance department will require employees to clock in and out of shifts in person, and managers will conduct unannounced crew sight visits during shifts, according to the OIG report.
The report recommends that BART seek civil restitution from the employees who remain at the agency and seek $9,004 in restitution from Boie, the retired employee.
Biemeret said the time thefts impact BART beyond the agency’s finances.
“Time theft is harmful to BART’s reputation,” Biemeret said. “It’s harmful to taxpayers who believe that their money is being spent on the system. And it’s harmful to riders in the sense that if people are claiming to be working, and they’re not, that means their job’s not getting done, and that presents itself with what you see on the trains.”