A former MBTA employee has pleaded guilty to conspiring to falsify Red Line track inspection reports and committing overtime fraud in a federal case that allegedly involved multiple workers, prosecutors said Thursday.
Andy Vicente, 37, of Bridgwater, was one of five former employees arrested in May 2025 who had worked at the transit agency’s Cabot Yard facility in South Boston, which is used to store and maintain Red Line vehicles, US Attorney Leah B. Foley’s office said in a statement.
Vicente, a former track inspector, and the other workers were accused of using the garage there as “an automobile repair shop,” according to court records.
In September, prosecutors replaced the previous charges against Vicente with a new set, the statement said. He pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Boston to conspiracy to falsify records and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
A lawyer for Vicente didn’t immediately return a request for comment from the Globe Thursday.
A plea agreement filed in his case said prosecutors will seek a term of “at the low end of the guidelines sentencing range,” a year of supervised release, and a fee of $200 that he must pay by the date of sentencing.
His sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 13. He remains free on conditions, records show.
The maintenance facility first came under scrutiny in October 2024 when the T placed several employees on leave and accused them of working on private vehicles during work hours. By February, a dozen employees had been fired or put on administrative leave. The same month, T general manager Phil Eng told the Globe that Transit Police had contacted federal authorities about activity at Cabot Yard in the fall.
Instead of completing inspections, crucial to ensuring the safety of tracks, prosecutors said, Vicente and his alleged co-conspirators either falsified track inspection reports or knowingly helped submit such reports from Jan. 1, 2024, through Oct. 16, 2024. They allegedly did this by creating falsified reports with information found online and extending the duration of “inspections” on a mobile application used by track inspectors “to make the inspection period appear longer than they were,” Foley’s office said.
This ensured that senior T executives “did not complain about the length of inspections,” the statement said.
During some of the times that Vicente reported he had conducted an inspection, prosecutors said he was actually working in the garage with other employees on vehicles that did not belong to the agency.
One day in September 2024, Vicente was captured on video surveillance sitting inside the garage at Cabot Yard holding his cellphone while he was supposedly performing a track inspection, Foley’s office said.
During the same period that Vicente was accused of falsifying track inspection reports, he and other former employees submitted overtime sheets for hours they did not work, prosecutors said.
On some occasions, the employees allegedly never showed up at all.
State payroll data show the T paid out more than $126 million in overtime to employees in 2024 — then a record that the agency attributed to the “monumental, somewhat historical level of work completed.”
That same year, Vicente received $80,000 in overtime, records show.
Shannon Larson can be reached at shannon.larson@globe.com. Follow her @shannonlarson98.