Investigation turns up massive fraud in Amtrak overtime reporting

Canada Free Press ^ | 06/24/15 | Dan Calabrese

[Sean_Anthony]

Forty hours in a single day?

Some excellent reporting here by Diana Stancy of The Daily Signal. I realize that when we start talking about dollars in reference to a federal agency, it’s hard to know what’s excessive. Amtrak pays $200 million in a single year just for overtime? Is that a lot? In the context of a $3.7 trillion federal budget?

Short answer: Yes. Amtrak’s entire personnel cost amounts to $1.2 billion, so you’re talking about one-sixth of that in overtime. But it’s when you really dig down into the reporting of hours that it becomes clear some of the employee claims that got Amtrak to that number amount to obvious fraud:

A variety of misleading documentation was visible in the audit. The Amtrak watchdog found employees often recorded more than 40 hours of work in a single day. Furthermore, employees reported 280 instances where they worked 31 days straight without any days off. One example the OIG cited was a coach cleaner, who reported working 108 days in a row.

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