CITY ABETTED PENSION RIPOFF

City Abetted Pension Ripoff

As the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and the NYPD look further into the identity theft at the Teachers' Retirement System, here is what is known to this point:

• Seven pensioners had $42,000 stolen from them;
• Police searching the apartment of a TRS clerk who has been arrested in the case found agency checks worth $359,000;
• The clerk, James Boyd, had been able to gain access to the personal and financial information supplied to the system by about 5,800 retirees;
• Mr. Boyd had been arrested for selling cocaine in 2003 and, following a plea bargain in the case, was serving five years' probation.

Now, much as we believe rehabilitation is possible for some criminals, there is something truly outrageous about the fact that a coke dealer of recent vintage was in a job where he could rob pensioners blind. And in weighing the equities here, we're not sure that Mr. Boyd's alleged acts are more criminal than the stupidity of the officials who put him in position to engineer such a scam.

The excuses were flying last week from a spokesman for the city Finance Department, which oversees TRS. No background check was done of Mr. Boyd because he was hired through a temp agency and never given permanent status at TRS.

Obviously something is wrong with that picture. It should be clear that persons working in agencies or handling job duties that place them in contact with sensitive material of any sort should be thoroughly checked out regardless of their civil service status. If anything, this case strongly argues that only civil servants should be entrusted with such posts, since one of the most powerful deterrents against this type of thievery is the potential loss of their own pensions. Whatever money the city saves hiring through a temp agency, or added flexibility it gains by not having to deal with a tenured civil servant, is outweighed by the potential for harm.

Two of Mr. Boyd's alleged accomplices have also been charged in the case, but it is unknown at this point whether anyone else was involved and if the theft total could subsequently rise.

Identity theft is going to be a growing concern for employees in an age when some personal data combined with personal identification numbers can allow criminals to pillage a life's savings without a gun. The International Association of Fire Fighters recently warned its members of unscrupulous individuals posing as IAFF reps who were trying to convince them to provide such information as the first step toward ripping them off.

Obviously, employees have to be careful. But the city has a duty to make sure that the employees at agencies like TRS with access to such confidential information are persons whose background stamps them as trustworthy. When candidate investigations fall between the cracks, city officials have inexcusably failed in that duty.