FORMER EMPLOYEE SENTENCED FOR FALSE STATEMENTS TO AMTRAK OIG AGENTS IN INVESTIGATION OF CONTRACT STEERING
A former Amtrak Superintendent of Transportation at Chicago Union Station, Benjamin Sheets, was sentenced on February 27, 2018, in the Federal District Court of Northern Illinois after pleading guilty to making false statements to our agents in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(1).
EMPLOYEE TERMINATED FOR FAILING TO PROPERLY DOCUMENT AND SECURE CASH
We initiated an investigation after receiving an allegation that employees at Chicago Union Station wrongfully kept approximately $1,700 in cash that was turned in to the ticket counter to be processed as “lost and found.”
FORMER EMPLOYEE SENTENCED FOR THEFT OF GOVERNMENT FUNDS
On January 18, 2018, a former Amtrak Customer Service Representative in Indianapolis, Indiana, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of theft of government funds, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 641. Our investigation determined that the former employee falsified her application for food stamp benefits while employed by Amtrak. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ordered her to pay $69,091 in restitution to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and sentenced her to two years of probation.
EMPLOYEE TERMINATED FOR VIOLATION OF POLICIES
On October 10, 2017, a Train Attendant in Miami, Florida, was terminated from employment for a violation of company policies. Our investigation determined that the employee used Amtrak trains to ship personal packages without paying the proper shipping fees, in violation of the company’s Standards of Excellence and Service Standards for Train Service & On-Board Service Employees.
GOVERNANCE: Opportunities to Improve Controls over Medical Claim Payments
We found that the company appears to be identifying only a small portion of potentially fraudulent medical claims made by individual medical service providers. Our work indicated that 14 percent of claims submitted by physicians, nurses, physical therapists and other individual providers from 2013 to 2015 were potentially fraudulent, which is significantly higher than the 1 percent of claims identified by the company’s primary claim administrator.