Two former employees of Caltrain, the commuter rail line serving California’s San Francisco Peninsula and Santa Clara Valley, were sentenced to a collective six months for embezzling funds to build unauthorized apartments inside stations.
MoneyWise reports Seth Andrew Worden, a Caltrain station manager, and Joseph Vincent Navarro, a deputy director with the rail system, were sentenced to 60 days and 120 days in county jail, respectively, for using $40,000 in public funds to build secret apartments – one at the Caltrain station in Burlingame and the other at the Millbrae station. The duo hired contractors to remodel former office spaces for their secret living quarters but were able to keep the invoices under $3,000 each to gain approval without suspicion.
“This is why I say to people, never say you’ve seen it all, because something new like this will come up,” said San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, who added, “When it’s public money that is being stolen by a public employee, that’s egregious. That takes it up a level.”
Worden was also sentenced to pay $8,000 in restitution and to receive substance abuse treatment and counseling while Navarro is required to surrender to authorities for his jail sentence on Aug. 2.
Photo of Milbrae station via Pi.1415926535 / Wikimedia Commons
You have to hand it to these two entrepreneurs. Very resourceful. I’ll bet they did the improvements at a fraction of the cost had the Caltrain staff handled the contracts. Very
typical of government waste. When these two get out after serving their sentences, they should be put on a project review panel for Caltrain
I can only imagine, what they might have had these spaces for. That is the higher concern. It is super creepy and I hope they were investigated in a way beyond the stolen money, free and secret hidey hole gives a reasonable person room to ponder further.