MTA Driver Accused of Fraud

A city bus driver has been charged with insurance fraud for allegedly faking an injury to collect at least $3,000 in workers’ compensation, authorities said Wednesday.

The arrest is the first of a Metropolitan Transportation Authority employee since the agency began overhauling its workers’ compensation system two years ago.”It’s been a mammoth undertaking, and we’re starting to see the results,” said Bruce Cochran, an MTA lawyer.

Since 1995, the agency’s costs for workers’ compensation have doubled, standing last year at $60 million. According to the MTA, it spent about $6,500 per employee in 2002 on workers’ compensation. Those costs were the highest in the nation for big-city transit agencies -- about six times as much per worker as is paid by the similar-sized Washington, D.C., bus and rail system and nearly 10 times what New York pays. So two years ago, MTA dropped the private insurance company that handled its workers’ compensation and formed its own department to process and investigate claims.

“The board of directors said, you’ve got to bring [workers’ compensation] costs down,” Cochran said. “The most effective way was to bring it in-house.”

MTA officials did not have immediate figures on how much has been saved so far, but the number of claims has decreased from 791 in the third quarter of 2001 to 500 in the same quarter this year.

The drop in the number of claims is a good sign, said Ephraim Turner, the prosecutor in charge of the arrest Tuesday. “When fraudulent activity goes unaddressed, then the numbers go up. But when people see others prosecuted for it, they think twice about fraud.”

Turner cited the arrest Tuesday morning as an example.

Prosecutors said that the MTA driver, Lolita A. Hicks Dolliole-Crowder, 50, had claimed that a passenger had struck her with a fist on the arm and wrist.

“But MTA pulled the tape [from the bus camera] to see what happened,” Turner said. “It doesn’t look like they even touched each other.”

Officials said Hicks Dolliole-Crowder had 15 prior claims with MTA and was out on disability from one of those claims when arrested. She faces a maximum of five years in prison if convicted on all 16 charges.

The MTA said it has referred 10 other cases of insurance fraud to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

“Fraud is not a violent crime,” Turner said. “The loss is felt in dollars and cents. And in these times, with costs rising and dollars shrinking, going after fraud is more necessary than ever.”