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MBTA bus farebox repairman charged with stealing $80,000 from the devices
By adamg on Wed, 06/20/2018 - 3:37pm
Transit and State Police report arresting a Dedham man they charge stole $80,000 from bus fareboxes on routes out of South Boston.
Stephen Fagerberg, 55, of Dedham, whose job was to maintain and repair the fareboxes, was arrested last night, police say.
The state began investigating Fagerberg in April:
Authorities conducted an undercover operation that included planting marked bills in fare collection boxes that Fagerberg serviced. Authorities allege that the defendant deposited the marked bills into his personal bank account via a drive-up ATM.
Fagerberg was arraigned this morning on a charge of larceny over $1,200 in a continuous scheme. He was released on personal recognizance but ordered to stay away from T property and to surrender his passport.
The T is looking to replace its current system, which lets riders use dollar bills and coins to replenish CharlieCards and CharlieTickets on a bus, with an entirely cashless system.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
mbta farebox repairman
can i have his job? his pension? insurance?
$80K?
Did he steal that much since April? Didn't he think they'd notice such a hefty amount?
UHub: Such a petty website
This website is constantly in cahoots with the rent-a-cops at the MBTA to try to publicly shame the small fry, such as mentally ill flashers, meth addicts, or kids jumping the turnstile. And yes, even at $80k, this guy falls into that small-fry category. For many of us in Greater Boston, that's not a lot of money, and this poor guy was probably struggling to make ends meet and ended up giving into temptation. So why not just let the justice system handle it, instead of the smug pretrial guilty, etc. crapola? At the very least, could you wait until a conviction?
There are strong odds that $80k is the amount of crooked money that's earned through dishonest corporate and public/private scams in this state probably every minute or so. It would be nice for this website to report on even a fraction of that, but I certainly appreciate that such quality of reporting would be far beyond the capabilities of the website's editor.
Better to just keep lazily republishing the junk emailed to you by the T and let the usual collection of a dozen or so largely idle and obsequious website users generate the clichéd, righteously indignant filler crap to follow.
Bite me
I can say that because you'll never see this note because you hate this site so much you'll never be coming back, right?
Wait, you're still here? Why? Don't you have better things to do with your time?
Why'd you let the comment through?
You could have spiked that crap like LeBron.
No - Let It Through
It reminds me of the low hanging fruit that would comment more if UHub accepted comments written in crayon.
"Bite Me"
I believe our Founding Fathers had this very sentiment in mind when enshrining the freedom of the press. Though they probably would have said it something like . . We beseech thee who shall protest unjustly to biteth me!
Adam
When we switched over to Daylight Savings Time, did you remember to test your troll alarm? Because that post really should have set it off.
Someone uses racial slurs...
...you ask them to stop. Someone calls you out on the snarky "innocent etc" thing, and you jump all over them. Priorities...
I just assumed
The anon was being sarcastic. I mean, who considers $80,000 chump change?
It had to be sarcasm, and good sarcasm at that, no?
I just assumed it was Mrs. Fagerberg.
Or Ma Fagerberg, or Auntie Willa Mae Fagerberg. I mean seriously—who defends this kind of crap?
Public/private scams like the
Public/private scams like the olympics? I remember that being covered here. I also remember the Massachusetts State Police members stealing millions from taxpayers being covered here.
This guy was making almost 100K. He isn't a "poor guy", just a dumb and greedy one.
Well if I want big time
Well if I want big time coverage of big time corporate scams, I can get that from big time news companies.
But I also like local, small-scale reporting. It's interesting to me, and I get joy out of seeing bad guys get busted. If I didn't read UHub, I wouldn't know all about these shenanigans.
And it might not seem like a lot of money to you, but don't poo-poo $80,000! $80,000 will buy you a steak and kidney pie, a cup of coffee, a slice of cheesecake, and a newsreel, with enough change left over to ride the trolley from Battery Park to the polo grounds.
Editorial Judgment
Editorial judgment is just that ... a judgement call.
Corruption in a government agency is newsworthy to many.
And, to prevent embarrassment, agencies often cover up corruption.
If the story does not interest you, just move on.
idiot
What part of "Innocent, etc." do you not understand? But then again, your type always cherry picks everything they read...
"I don't like this story, I want to talk about something else."
Not the way that news works kiddo.
Who me?
I take offense sir. I am not obsequious!
Soooo un-fare
to report on fare theft, deviants, punks, robbers and run of the mill crini-malls when we have corporate america bla bla bla-ing
You know what IS petty?
That "anon" designation sure makes whatever mass of text to follow seem petty. Your going into a long-winded tirade about the quality of this site & its historic reporting while not providing constructive feedback on what could be implemented to improve its quality is pretty petty. The suggestive tone that "larger-scale" criminal activity should be reported here, despite being widely available & regularly repeated among almost all Boston area TV/radio/media outlets at any one given time sure sounds petty.
Yet, despite your diatribe about UHub & Adam's reporting, you seemingly made a regularly-occurring conscious effort to study the template of what this site is about (in terms of stories reported & dialogue that accompanies respective subject matter) which likely helped mold your opinion of how 'awful' this place is. If that kind of contradiction in behavior, combined with your desired anonymity & lack of actual contribution is what you think equates to a valid opinion being taken seriously, then I must commend you on building yourself a grand platform of negativity & nothingness that we all will forget exists by the time this browser window is closed.
What are you—this guy’s mom?
Sorry but $80k in the space of a few months is not turnstile jumping.
hey mistah
you sure got a purty website
Burn!
You sure told us. I'd kick your a**, but I'm largely idle, obsequious, purple AND clairvoyant.
With sincere apologies to Steve Martin.
The T stands for corruption
Thefts from buses, thefts from the revenue room , thefts from parking lots, kickback schemes, no show police details, no show construction jobs, union officials arrested for fraud, How many whistleblower lawsuits have been filed because honest employees have had enough with the corrupt practices that go on and on.
No, C stands for Corruption.
No, C stands for Corruption. Also Cookie.
Good enough for me
.
I don't know...
How many?
No, it stands for "Trouble"
With a capital T, which rhymes with P, which as we all know, stands for "Pool"
Is nobody impressed that the
Is nobody impressed that the alleged thief, who may or may not be this guy, collected eighty thousand in one dollar bills and change?!
When 3/4 of The Riders Use Charlie Cards and Passes
At least. I ride the bus into and out of Southie throughout the week, and I would guess that maybe every 7th or 8th passenger might actually put some kind of currency in the box. Almost everyone is tapping. It makes me wonder what % of the total cash intake on these routes the perp skimmed. It's gotta be something high.
What always impresses me
What always impresses me about stories like this is the final step of dumbness that leads to them getting caught.
This guy was stealing coins and $1 bills, tops. The drivers don't make change, so there are no $5s-$100s in those fare boxes.
This guy must've been doing this a lot, stealing small amounts over a long period of time. He's not going to get $80,000 in $1s and quarters quickly.
He got away with it that whole time. Eventually the T noticed, but they still weren't able to discover who was doing it, so they had to plant traceable currency in the boxes and wait.
He then stupidly deposited the stolen money into an ATM, rather than just spending them outright in places where his name isn't on record. Busted.
For some reason
people think they're immune when they use ATMs to deposit stolen money or to take out money for illegal purposes, when the machine is recording their name and taking their picture too.
"But I did it where no one could see me!"
Correction: The T’s new
Correction: The T’s new system will still take cash — You’ll just have to pay with cash before you board.
Will the new system still
Will the new system still require you to go to a station to buy new monthly passes? Or, rather, to 'activate' them, since you can buy them online now but they're useless until you tap it against a fare machine, making the online purchasing completely useless for anyone whose daily bus commute doesn't involve a train station?
No. Monthly passes will work
No. Monthly passes will work without that extra "activation" step.
If you can pay cash before
If you can pay cash before you board.
Many bus stops won't have a vending machine. If you're boarding there, the bus is cashless for you.
I stole from the T
I stole from the T
When we had no money for fare we would split a pack of Wrigley's gum, use the silver foil to cover pennies to make them look like dimes, and use them to get in the bus or mattapan trolley. . Of course the drivers/conductors could tell they were fake but we were young kids, obviously poor, usually cold and the drivers were mostly nice guys.
Usually afternooen swim at murphy pool in dorchester.
There's Still Some Look-The-Other-Way Going On
But I ain't sayin' on what lines. And it's usually for reasons like you just said.
Larceny over $1200
I'm used to seeing "larceny over $250" charges, not $1200, but it appears this new threshold is a result of a major overhaul of MA's criminal justice laws that passed just recently.