A former senior Metro-North procurement official was sentenced to at least a year in prison for fixing lucrative Metropolitan Transportation Authority bids for a vendor in exchange for $70,000 in kickbacks, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced Tuesday.
James Berlangero, 64, of Glen Cove, worked as a contract manager at the commuter railroad, and was sentenced to one-to-three years behind bars for the scheme, providing Long Island firm WRS Environmental Services with insider info and unfair advantages, leading to the misappropriation of more than $10 million worth of contracts, according to the DA’s office.
In exchange, the company’s owner wrote the train honcho checks for tens of thousands of dollars, according to Manhattan’s top prosecutor, who investigated the illegal operation with the MTA’s Office of Inspector General.
“This former Metro-North contract manager misused taxpayer dollars and railroaded a contracting process that should have been decided based on free competition,” said Bragg in a statement on Sept. 13.
“Thanks to our law enforcement partners at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the money train derailed long ago for this former Metro-North worker who was caught pocketing kickbacks from an MTA vendor,” said Acting MTA Inspector General, Elizabeth Keating.
Beginning in February 2015, Berlangero intervened in a bidding process he was managing at the time for a $4 million waste disposal contract for Metro-North.
When it looked like WRS wouldn’t get the deal, he made sure the request for proposals was restarted allowing two companies to get the work instead of just one.
He then gave WRS secret score sheets and criteria Metro-North’s selection committee was looking for so the company could tailor its presentation, and he also told them the other company’s price so they could undercut the competition, according to the DA’s office.
Later that year, the Long Islander helped WRS get a sub-contract to work on damage from Hurricane Sandy along the commuter railroad for $1 million in work to date, again by giving them the rate of the competition.
In 2017, while overseeing a contract to remove asbestos from Metro-North properties, including at Grand Central Terminal in Midtown, Berlangero leaked confidential information on two existing vendors to WRS, including their pricing, teeing up the firm’s successful bid for the $400,000 in remediation work.
“There is zero tolerance at Metro-North for the misuse of public funds,” said Metro-North Railroad President and Long Island Rail Road Interim President Catherine Rinaldi in a statement. “The actions of this former employee to defraud Metro-North and abuse the contracting process for kickbacks and bribes were unlawful, and I am grateful to see justice served.”
In exchange for the unfair advantages, WRS’s owner and co-defendant, Michael Rodgers, gave Berlangero more than $50,000, including $32,000 to pay off his home’s mortgage and $14,000 in direct checks.
Rodgers also deposited some $8,000 in cash in Berlangero’s credit union account and gave $10,000 to the transit chief’s brother-in-law for a car racing sponsorship.
The company owner made his employees do work on Berlangero’s house, including cleaning and clearing of his basement, doing soil tests ahead of selling the house, and helping him move after he hawked off the property.
Berlangero also got a job for his daughter at WRS, and tried to get one for his son.
A 2019 investigation by the MTA’s OIG prompted Berlangero to resign from Metro-North, and he was arrested in January 2020.
He briefly worked as an outside consultant for New Jersey Transit for two months in April of 2021, before the Garden State agency realized he was under indictment for criminal charges and terminated him, reported the New Jersey Globe.
Berlangero pleaded guilty to four felony charges on May 26, 2022, including corrupting the government, receiving bribes, and two counts of contracts and agreements for monopoly and in restraint of trade.
Rodgers pleaded guilty to bribery and two counts of monopoly contracts in December and is awaiting sentencing. As part of a guilty plea, he agreed to sell the company.
A business development director at WRS, Thomas Willis, was also convicted of two counts of contract monopoly and sentenced to probation in February.
