Even the MTA doesn’t want to take the subway.
An MTA safety superintendent fabricated bogus city parking placards at home so he could use them on his personal cars to park in illegal spaces outside MTA Headquarters, officials said Thursday.
Leon Bipat was given a free MetroCard for working for the MTA but opted to drive to work and illegally park in a no-standing zone outside MTA offices in lower Manhattan using a placard with a forged NYC Transit insignia, MTA Inspector General Daniel Cort said in a report released Thursday.
NYC Transit, the branch of the MTA where Bipat worked as a superintendent auditing safety rule compliance for subway and bus workers, does not even issue street parking placards, the report said.
“This employee knowingly violated MTA policies and his dishonest conduct is unacceptable,” a spokesperson for the MTA said.
Investigators, tipped off by an anonymous complaint, ran surveillance in March and September of last year and spotted each of Bipat’s two personal vehicles sporting one of the fake passes.
In interviews with investigators, Bipat admitted he had scanned a “template” and used a home computer to match fonts and make placards tailored to each car, claiming he found the template among “papers lying around” an office building at an unrelated cleaning gig.
But he could not remember who hired him, where the job took place or what type of office he was cleaning.
Both cars had out‑of‑state plates and insurance, and Bipat further admitted to lying to his insurer about where he lived to secure cheaper rates — conduct the inspector general told the insurance company about.
The investigation also uncovered that Bipat had quietly been running his own LLC since 2021 doing auto repairs and cleaning work without ever seeking required dual employment approval.
He told the inspector general he earned about $1,500 in 2024 from his second job, despite MTA’s ethics training that outlines rules of conduct for dual employment.
The inspector general concluded Bipat violated multiple MTA conduct rules and the state’s Public Officers Law that bars public employees from using their positions for “unwarranted privileges” and from undermining public trust.
NYC Transit stripped Bipat of his superintendent title on Feb. 10, suspended him and gave him a permanent demotion back to trackworker — plus a “final warning.”
He is now not being paid until a new hourly trackworker slot opens up, according to the report.
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