A Stolen Fortune, Not in Jewels, but Bus Passes : Crime: Thefts over the years have cost the MTA millions. Even a bus driver and a security consultant have been nabbed as the agency tries to crack down on the scams.

As heists go, these didn’t have the daring of train robberies or the finesse of art forgeries or even the spoils of, say, an armored car job. Still, what David Scott Rough and Jose Mendez Flores pulled off two years ago deserves at least some mention, somewhere.

Over the course of a year and in separate scams, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Rough and Flores cost the transit agency more than $1 million--perhaps much more--in lost revenues. And the scams did not involve counterfeit bills or stolen bus parts or any of the countless other assets of the multibillion-dollar transit agency.

Rough, an MTA consultant who ironically was hired to help protect the agency from counterfeiters, and Flores, a honored MTA bus driver, trafficked in bus passes and transfers.

An audit last week not only found that the MTA may be losing millions of dollars each year because of sloppy cash management and poor equipment, but that bus passes and even 25-cent transfers may be big business for bus drivers, passengers and even people who who never ride the MTA.

Since the 1993 arrests and successful prosecutions of Rough, Flores and others for stealing or counterfeiting MTA passes, agency officials say new security measures have made it more difficult to rob the transit operation of fare revenues.

In addition to hiring a new director of revenue and establishing tougher regulations on the in-house distribution and collection of passes, the MTA has directed its police force to place a high priority on preventing bus fare thefts.

Agency police have established a revenue security team to focus solely on the security of MTA’s cash operations, said spokeswoman Andrea Greene.

Still, the inspector general’s office is unwilling to conclude that the new measures are working. Not yet anyway. Based on the potential losses attributed just to Rough and Flores, one auditor who refused to be identified offered a none too optimistic appraisal of the revenues stolen from the district.

“Certainly,” the auditor said, “it has to be a very large figure.”

The recent audit put at $1.2 million the loss in revenues caused by the theft and sale of transfers by one driver. Although the audit does not mention the driver by name, MTA police and court records show that it was Flores, who at the time of his 1993 arrest was a 36-year-old MTA driver honored several times as the agency’s employee of the month.

Two years ago, interviews and court records show, Flores was arrested, convicted and sentenced to six months in jail for grand theft. Exactly how much he pocketed remains unclear although MTA police said that when they arrested Flores he seemed to be living beyond the means of a typical bus driver--a nice home in Eagle Rock, two homes in Mexico, a new car and enough cash to loan money to other bus drivers.

“He . . . was always showing a roll of bills and willing to lend money to other operators,” MTA Police Capt. Dennis Conte said.

Acting on a tip that bus transfers were being stolen from the agency and sold on the streets, MTA police put one suspected distributor, Cecelio Cabrera, an unemployed welder and laborer, under surveillance beginning in late June, 1993.

Arriving just before dawn one morning near Cabrera’s home in Los Angeles, two MTA officers testified, they saw Flores’ car pull into a nearby alley. The driver honked the horn three times, the officers said, and Cabrera jumped a brick wall at his home to walk to the vehicle.

Moments later, they said, the driver of the car reached out the window and began dropping what appeared to be bundles of bus transfers into a cardboard box that Cabrera was holding.

One week later, officers said, they saw Flores leave an MTA bus station Downtown about 7 a.m. and walk to his car, emptying his shirt pocket and pants pockets of more books of bus transfers. Two hours later on the same day, the officers said, Flores drove from the bus station and picked up Cabrera, who later left Flores’ car carrying a white plastic bag.

After yet another rendezvous between the two men, MTA police said, they arrested Flores and Cabrera, recovering 75 books of transfers from Flores’ car.

In estimating the $1.2-million loss to the agency, MTA officials based their calculations on the potential loss over a year of thousands of 25-cent transfers that could each have been used for the regular $1.35 fares.

“Each book contains 50 transfers . . . and he was taking as many as 50 books a day,” Conte said. “And that went almost a year.”

In October, 1993, records show, Flores, who had been with the MTA three years, pleaded guilty to grand theft and was sentenced to 180 days in County Jail and three years probation. Cabrera received a similar sentence and both were ordered to pay $5,000 in restitution to MTA--an amount each is still making payments on.

Neither man, nor their attorneys, could be reached for comment.

One month after the trials ended, MTA police were again investigating an inside theft of bus passes.

David Rough, who court records show served nine months in federal prison in 1985 for wire fraud involving a New York bank, was hired as a subcontractor by a Chino firm that was awarded a $370,000 contract to help protect the MTA from counterfeiters, agency officials said. He was helping to design a new bus pass that MTA officials hoped would be difficult to counterfeit.

Authorities say the Irvine man used his access to the agency to steal bus transfers that he sold. The Chino firm’s contract was immediately canceled.

How much Rough may have made remains unclear, although MTA police say that at the time of his arrest Rough had 1,200 bus passes--each worth $42. And when they searched his home, MTA police said, they found 44,000 passes.

Like Flores, Rough was arrested after a brief surveillance by MTA police. And also like Flores, Rough was taken into custody with another man who authorities say was a middleman assisting in what could have been a large-scale street distribution of phony bus passes.

In November, 1993, officers testified, they saw Rough meet one afternoon with Hugo Godinez of Los Angeles. The two men met at a fast-food restaurant Downtown where, an undercover officer testified, he heard only one word exchanged: “Passes.”

Watching the two in the parking lot, the officer said, he saw Rough hand over what appeared to be two big bundles of bus passes to Godinez, who shoved them into his parka jacket.

After the exchange, Godinez walked away from Rough’s car and the officer, trying to determine exactly what was passed, approached Godinez and pretended to be a panhandler. When Godinez opened his jacket for change, the officer said, he could clearly see packages of bus passes stuffed inside the parka.

Neither the men nor their attorneys could be reached for comment.

Godinez, now 25, was charged with receiving stolen property and with possession of counterfeit tickets. He was convicted and sentenced to six months in County Jail and three years probation. Rough, now 59, received a one-year jail sentence and three years probation for grand theft, counterfeiting tickets and receiving stolen property.

Mindful of how businessman Rough and bus driver Flores had run afoul of the law, judges in both felony cases added one important stipulation to the terms of probation:

Flores is not allowed to have more than one bus transfer at a time. And Rough is not allowed to have an MTA pass.