A CEO of a Staten Island oil business was unable to slip out of charges that he defrauded the MTA and pleaded guilty Thursday to greasing his palms with $800,000, the Manhattan district attorney announced.
Joseph Ioia of New York Commercial Lubricants, copped to a grand larceny count for selling cheap transmission fluid for buses to NYC Transit. Ioia’s company was supposed to be supplying a type of fluid it was unauthorized to sell, according to prosecutors.
Ioia, 61, is scheduled for sentencing in December and is expected to give up $863,000, take five years of probation and a three-month jail sentence that can be served intermittingly.
The MTA’s inspector general’s office uncovered the scam, which lasted between May 2010 and March 2011.
“Defrauding the Transit Authority is akin to defrauding all New York residents,” Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said in a statement.
