Today Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes announced two indictments against three people charged with scamming the Authority out of more than $150,000 in two separate schemes carried out over the course of four years. The ringleader, according to prosecutors, was Jacqueline Jackson, 51, the head of the Legal Support Unit in NYC Transit's Law Department. "Jacqueline Jackson, whose job it was to save taxpayers money by fighting frivolous lawsuits against the NYCTA, cost those taxpayers money, by stealing from the very agency that hired her," Hynes said, telling reporters, "These schemes make my head hurt. You think of all the things they could have done if they used their genius for good."
Jackson was in charge of setting up independent medical examinations for people suing NYCTA. Prosecutors say she hired a records retrieval company, AJI, to collect court, medical and insurance paperwork pertaining to lawsuits, and then signed off on inflated invoices, splitting the overage with AJI's owner, Joyce Ilarraza, 63, to the tune of $50,000. In the second scam, a former prosecutor at the Brooklyn DA’s office, John Headley, is charged with working with Jackson to steal more than $98,000 from the NYCTA. The indictment charges that Jackson directed business to Headley's company, Advance IME. In exchange for these services, Headley paid for Jackson’s personal expenses, such as the gas and electric bills at her Brooklyn home, according to the indictment.
You may recall that when investigators raided Jackson's home in January, 2009, they found five flat screen televisions, five fur coats and a Mercedes parked in the driveway (for when her Lincoln Navigator is in the shop). Charges against the three include Grand Larceny and Falsifying Business Records. "It is important to note that this investigation began as a result of honest and hardworking MTA New York City Transit employees reporting their suspicions to our office," said MTA Inspector General Kluger. "However, I am concerned that proper failsafe mechanisms were not in place to first deter and then detect this fraud."
