BURR RIDGE - Among new laws enacted on January 1, 2013, will be an effort to stop a different kind of crime—fraud on
Illinois’ suburban and Chicago transit systems. House Bill 4440/PA 97-781, sponsored in the Illinois Senate by State Senator Kirk Dillard of Burr Ridge seeks to curtail fraud associated with Illinois’ “Seniors Ride
Free” program. The effort could save the Regional Transportation
Authority (RTA) as much as $350,000 per year in lost revenue.
“The RTA found that there could be
as many as 1,000 Seniors Ride Free cards being abused each year. These
individuals are getting a free ride—literally—from the State of Illinois to the tune of
almost a half-billion dollars,” said Dillard. “Requiring RTA and the state’s
Department of Public Health officials to frequently check current Seniors Ride
Free cardholders against those who have passed away is a common-sense practice
that in time will save the state millions of
dollars.”
Dillard said that in 2010, the RTA
performed an audit of the Seniors Ride Free program to determine whether cards
belonging to deceased seniors were being fraudulently used after their death.
The Transit Authority found that 164 of the 3,124 Seniors Ride Free cards
sampled were used after the cardholders’ death. Based on mortality rate
statistics provided by the National Vital Statistics Reports, if cards belonging
to the 20,150 Seniors Ride Free cardholders projected to pass away each year
were used fraudulently at the same rate as the sample taken during the 2010 RTA
audit, more than 1,000 cards would be compromised—which adds up to $350,000 a
year.
