Many conspired in T pass fraud

The couple, Andres Townes and Gloria Escobar, started with a single ad on Craigslist in 2007 and a plan for Townes to print real but unauthorized passes at his job with a T contractor and for Escobar to deliver them and collect cash from unsuspecting customers, officials said.

That initial enterprise grew into a mostly mail-order operation moving roughly $100,000 worth of discounted passes a month to T riders across the Boston area. Regular customers sent money orders to a post office box the couple shared in Beverly, while new customers paid in person to Escobar or their network of regional accomplices, according to the office of the state attorney general.

“It’s clear at this point it was a very well-organized, extensive, and long-running scheme,’’ said Assistant Attorney General Gina Masotta, alluding to several distributors who remain unnamed.

Arraigned in handcuffs yesterday in Salem District Court, Townes and Escobar, both 27 years old, struck a disheveled appearance, Townes in a rumpled V-neck, Escobar in a faded T-shirt.

But that belied the fortune that authorities said they derived from their crime, spending it on houses, jewelry, cars, and vacations.

Neither said a word during their arraignment, when they pleaded not guilty to larceny and conspiracy to commit larceny. Judge Michael C. Lauranzano set bail for Townes at $250,000 and for Escobar at $100,000.

If they do post bail, Masotta asked the judge to require them to submit sworn testimony about where the money came from. Their lawyers said afterward that they could not afford to post bail and would remain in custody.

The lawyers described Townes and Escobar as, at most, cogs in a broader operation and stressed that they had cooperated with investigators.

“I would hope the court would see a fellow who participated, if you believe in the allegations of the government, in a scheme to produce these tickets [who] couldn’t have done it alone,’’ said William J. O’Hare, Townes’s lawyer.

Townes was hired in 2007 by the company that oversees sales and service for all MBTA passes not purchased at stations. As a supervisor, he had password access to a T-owned machine that prints and encodes paper CharlieTickets and monthly passes.

Working from a nondescript nook inside a Beverly office park, Townes allegedly created thousands of real but unauthorized “ghost passes.’’ The T was supposed to receive a transmission notifying it of every new pass, but Townes figured out a way to disable the feed, Masotta said.

The passes worked liked authorized ones, and once in use the T had no system to check whether they were connected to real customer accounts.

The Craigslist ads authorities linked to Townes and Escobar were similar to many others on the free classifieds that unload partially used T passes mid-month, except that the duo had discounted passes available in advance, even before the T was officially selling them.

Townes and Escobar allegedly used the aliases Rich and Lisa Rohan. The business grew over the Internet and by word of mouth, spreading in the Boston area, authorities said.

Prosecutors acknowledged their cooperation, Townes after his arrest Thursday in Revere, Escobar after turning herself in while visiting family in Maine. “Each of them made extensive admissions,’’ Masotta said.

Townes indicated that he pocketed about $800,000 in profits over four years, while Escobar collected a stipend of about $25,000 a month, she said.

“He also named several of his coconspirators,’’ Masotta said, as Townes turned his glance away from the courtroom.

Although Townes admitted printing $4 million worth of passes, Masotta added, some remained unsold. When State Police and Transit Police arrested Townes, they found two bags of shredded passes — suggesting he was destroying evidence as investigators closed in — as well as bundles of monthly passes encoded to work as far out as November 2012.

Townes is on administrative leave from Cubic Transportation Systems, the California company that collects $2.3 million annually for processing about $135 million in MBTA passes purchased online, over the phone, at stores, and by employers.

His alleged scheme might have continued undetected if not for a sharp-eyed conductor on the Providence/Stoughton Line of the commuter rail, who did a double-take upon seeing a customer’s faded pass on March 11.

The fading, caused by inadvertent laundering, would have happened even if the pass were legitimate. But the customer, perhaps out of nervousness, offered that he had purchased it at a discount on Craigslist. The conductor collected the pass and gave it to Transit Police, who found no record of its serial number.

That prompted an investigation that eventually led authorities to 50 witnesses who admitted purchasing discounted passes traced to Cubic’s printer and offered e-mail addresses that led police to Townes.

Two witnesses also identified Escobar as Lisa Rohan from photos, though others had purchased passes from alleged associates, according to a court statement submitted by Trooper Edmund Hartwell.

Investigators believe the scam dates at least to a November 2007 Craigslist ad they say Townes posted when he was working for ERG Transit Systems, a company whose MBTA contract Cubic bought in 2009.

Townes and Escobar were each raised in Boston. He attended Boston Latin Academy and later took classes at Roxbury Community College. When he registered to vote at 20, he was living in public housing in Boston. By age 24, less than a year after the alleged scam began, he had enough scraped together to put down 20 percent on a small house he bought in Lawrence for $145,000.

By January, when he and Escobar relocated to Revere, he was able to pay in full for a $265,000 house on Emanuel Street, a quiet lane running between a Catholic church and a salt marsh. The cash purchase created chatter in the neighborhood, but that receded as the two established themselves as genial but quiet neighbors.

“He was very pleasant,’’ said Jim Cannarozzo, who lives next door and who asked Townes about his job once. “He did envelopes, he said.’’

Eric Moskowiz can be reached at emoskowitz@globe.com.