Revere man pleads guilty to theft of $45G of MBTA cash

REVERE – A 71-year-old Revere man pleaded guilty Wednesday in Suffolk Superior to stealing at least $45,000 in tokens and cash from Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) fare machines.Robert Gibson, 134 Broad Sound Ave., was given a suspended three-year jail term for larceny after admitting he skimmed tokens and cash from glass-sided Speedy Boxes while performing his former job as an MBTA mechanic.Jake Wark, press secretary to Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, said the Speedy Boxes are no longer in use but once allowed bus and rail passengers to deposit coins and bills to pay their fare. “Those Speedy Boxes are gone, but for many years they were near the cash collector’s booth. People would push cash into them but the boxes were prone to jamming. It was one of the defendant’s duties to unjam them,” he said.According to Wark, authorities got wise to the thefts when Gibson began converting the loot by purchasing plastic CharlieCards, the MBTA’s latest payment method for regular riders.An MBTA employee at Wellington Station first observed Gibson putting large amounts of cash and tokens onto CharlieCards, and that led to the investigation in early 2007, said Wark, noting Gibson was indicted by a Suffolk grand jury in April 2007.Investigators soon suspected that the recently-retired Gibson was redeeming large quantities of tokens at CharlieCard booths, which transferred the value of cash and outdated tokens to the new plastic cards.MBTA Transit Police detectives conducted a surveillance of the station and observed Gibson using tokens to place up to $100 of value on a CharlieCard almost every weekday at about the same time, Wark said, adding that this activity was captured on videotape as well.Subsequent analysis of fare transactions revealed that, during the period between Jan. 3 and Feb. 28, 2007, Gibson was responsible for approximately 5 percent of all tokens redeemed on the entire MBTA system and about 80 percent of tokens redeemed at Wellington Station.When confronted with the evidence, Gibson led the detectives to the basement of his Revere home, directing them to more than a dozen five-gallon buckets filled with a total of $30,542 in coins and $10,270 in tokens. Gibson also produced 43 CharlieCards with a combined charged value of $4,500.Wark said Gibson had a fairly lengthy career as an MBTA maintenance worker. Upon pleading guilty, Gibson was ordered to make full restitution of the $45,000 and sentenced to a term of one year in a house of correction, suspended for three years, Wark said.Gibson was represented by defense lawyer Brian Goodwin. Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Walsh, the case prosecutor, had recommended a five-year jail term.As part of the plea agreement, Judge Peter Lauriat also ordered Gibson to forfeit his privilege as an MBTA retiree to lifetime free rides on the agency’s trains and buses.”Every cent of that money came from riders who paid their fair share,” Conley said. “The theft we saw here over a period of years wasn’t just theft from the MBTA , it was theft from the pockets and purses of every rider and passenger. MBTA customers deserve to see that money put back into the system they pay for.”