First LIRR worker fired in time-fraud scheme

A Long Island Rail Road car inspector accused of using a cloned employee ID card to cover up for his absences while working a second job has become the first railroad employee to be fired as the result of a counterfeit time card investigation, officials said Friday.

MTA Inspector General Daniel Cort, in a post on X, announced that the LIRR had terminated "Employee 2," as he was identified in Cort’s 65-page report released last month on a three-year investigation into cloned ID cards at the LIRR. Newsday, through a public records request, identified the worker as Richard Bovell, a road car inspector hired by the LIRR 20 years ago.

Confirming the termination, LIRR President Rob Free in a statement said "corruption will not be tolerated" at the railroad.

"Employees who steal from taxpayers forfeit their right to public jobs," Free said.

Reached by phone Friday, Bovell said the allegation that he used a cloned card to get paid by the LIRR while he was working another job was "a bunch of bull." He acknowledged he had a card, but said they were widely used by employees because the railroad was "a stickler, especially when it comes to having time off," and workers sometimes needed to get away to tend to family emergencies and other responsibilities.

Bovell was one of 36 LIRR workers — including seven supervisors — implicated in the scheme, which sought to take advantage of a COVID-era health precaution banning finger scanning at biometric time clocks. From March 2020 to September 2024, workers instead swiped employee ID cards to record their attendance.

According to investigators, Bovell purchased an unauthorized duplicate of his employee ID card from another car inspector, Brian Kearns, for $40, and used the bogus badge "to appear as if he was present for his LIRR shift, while he was actually absent due to his outside employment at a private Suffolk County bus company."

Kearns could not be reached for comment.

According to investigators, LIRR Maintenance of Equipment department employees, working out of facilities in Ronkonkoma, the Richmond Hill section of Queens and Manhattan’s West Side Yard, used magnetic swipe card reading devices and blank cards purchased on Amazon to run off copies of employee badges and sold them to co-workers for $5 to $40.

Employees used the cards to cover for their co-workers when they ran late, left early or no-showed altogether, investigators said.

Bovell admitted to investigators that he used a cloned card to swipe Kearns out at the end of Kearns' shift "approximately three times a week for a year" before "it became too much," according to the inspector general's report.

Most of the implicated workers have accepted disciplinary sanctions, including unpaid suspensions, demotions and wage forfeitures. Disciplinary cases are still pending for five employees who, like Bovell, could be terminated, according to the MTA.

"This employee repeatedly breached the public trust by collecting pay for time he didn't work and helping colleagues do the same," Cort said of Bovell in a statement. "His firing is further evidence that this type of misconduct will not be tolerated."

On Thursday, Anthony Simon, who heads the union representing Bovell and most of the other implicated LIRR workers, said, "We do not, in any way, shape or form condone bad behavior."

Bovell said he was fired after being unable to show up at his disciplinary trial because, after being taken out of service by the LIRR, he recently began a new job. Unlike other employees implicated in the cloned card scheme, Bovell said was not offered any leniency for his misconduct and was told, "Either I resign, or they fire me."

"You’re giving these guys their job back or just getting demoted, but you’re telling me I’m fired? That doesn’t make any sense to me," said Bovell, who believes the railroad sought to make an example out of him and other rank-and-file employees implicated in the plot.

"I definitely regret it, because I always stayed off the radar, stayed out of trouble with everything," he said. "For this to happen, yeah, I regret doing anything like that."

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.