By Courtney Dentch
A Long Island Rail Road conductor was charged in a ticket collection fraud scheme in which he allegedly stole more than $50,000 by skimming hundreds of dollars a week from cash transactions, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.
Dennis Perri, 49, of Port Jefferson, was charged with grand larceny, falsifying business records, and petit larceny, Brown said. He could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
“The defendant is alleged to have used his ticket punch as a tool for larceny and to have cheated the railroad out of tens of thousands of dollars in passenger receipts over the last year,” Brown said.
According to the criminal complaint, during a 12-month period Perri allegedly engaged in “ticket splitting,” a practice where tickets are sold for cash with the correct amount punched on the passengers’ receipts but a lower fare punched on the LIRR’s copy. Perri would allegedly keep the balance of the fare, Brown said.
The scheme was discovered when an internal review found Perri’s average ticket price at $1.47 was much lower than the $6.64 average ticket sold by other conductors working on the same route, Brown said.
Perri was arrested last week by the Metropolitan Transit Authority Police, and he admitted to officials that he had been splitting tickets since 1993, stealing about $700 a week from the railroad, Brown said.
