Amtrak worker had people pay for fake trip — then said bomb threat canceled it, feds say

An Amtrak worker convinced more than 40 people to pay for a round-trip excursion from New Orleans to New York City — but the trip was fake, federal prosecutors said.

The employee convinced the people to pay her around $500 each to secure a private spot on an Amtrak train before telling them the June 2019 trip was suddenly canceled over a bomb threat, court documents show.

In reality, the bomb threat was another lie the Amtrak worker told those who gave her money for the purported trip, which was also supposed to include tickets to shows and museums in New York City, food, sight-seeing tours and hotel accommodations, according to an affidavit. All told, the woman stole at least $23,000 from the people she duped, prosecutors said.

Now the woman, who no longer works for Amtrak, will spend a year in prison after she pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced in a Jan. 9 news release.

A judge sentenced her to six months in prison for each count of wire fraud and ordered her to pay restitution to the people she stole from, prosecutors said.

McClatchy News contacted the woman’s attorney for comment on Jan. 10 and didn’t immediately receive a response.

How the scam worked

For the fake trip, the woman ran two Facebook groups titled “Dem Nola Girlz” and “NOLA and NYC,” according to the affidavit.

As the planned June 21, 2019 excursion approached, the woman announced on the “NOLA and NYC” page that Amtrak had canceled the trip after she already received thousands in PayPal payments for it, investigators said.

She concocted a fake story, informing those who paid for the excursion that one of the attendees who also paid for the trip “created a confrontation” with Amtrak employees at the station in New Orleans on June 8, according to the affidavit.

Supposedly, the employee said, this individual attacked another Amtrak worker and made a bomb threat while asking to see her room on the train for the trip, according to investigators.

The woman “represented that she was fighting to get the trip restored or the passengers’ money returned,” after announcing the cancellation, the affidavit said.

After skeptical victims reached out to law enforcement, Amtrak began investigating and the woman ultimately admitted she misled people into paying for a nonexistent trip, according to investigators.

In addition to this, the woman was also caught submitting fake sick benefit claims to the Railroad Retirement Board, prosecutors said.

She lied about being too ill to do her job and was paid more than $4,500 in sick benefit claims, according to the release. Officials said she was actually working elsewhere at the time.

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