New Jersey Claims Bus Company Bilked NJ Transit for Missed Trips

(Bloomberg) -- A bus company that bills itself as the nation’s largest private transportation company defrauded New Jersey Transit out of more than $15 million by underreporting the number of scheduled trips the company missed, according to a whistle-blower lawsuit filed by New Jersey’s attorney general.

In the lawsuit, filed Monday in New Jersey Superior Court in Essex County, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal also accuses Hoboken-based Academy Bus LLC of charging fees for hours and miles driven for bus trips that never happened.

The case, which cites an “extensive multiyear, multimillion-dollar fraud,” alleges tens of thousands of missed bus trips between April 2012 and December 2018 and is the highest dollar-value whistle-blower lawsuit in which the state has joined, Grewal’s office said in a statement.

Representatives of Academy didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Academy bills NJ Transit about $12 million each year for its services, and NJ Transit retains all fares Academy collects along the routes. The complaint cites text messages between Academy employees in which they allegedly discussed how much they’d reduce the real numbers -- labeled “RN” in texts -- before sending them to NJ Transit.

The case is Grewal v. Academy Bus LLC, ESX-L-1669-17, Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County (Newark).

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