SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Oct. 2, 2019 (Gephardt Daily) — A Utah Transit Authority employee is facing multiple felony charges after authorities say he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in coins from bus fare boxes and deposited the money in his personal bank accounts.
David Leroy Healy, 54, of Taylorsville, is accused of taking more than $300,000 from UTA, starting in January of 2014 until Oct. 1, 2019, when a warrant was issued for his arrest.
According to charging documents filed Tuesday in Third District Court in Salt Lake County, on Sept. 10, police were notified by one of Healy’s neighbors that the neighbor frequently saw Healy arrive at his home in a UTA vehicle, and had seen Healy carry buckets of coins from the UTA vehicle into his garage.
The neighbor also reported seeing Healy at a nearby Walmart, exchanging large amounts of coins at the coin exchange machine. The neighbor asked a cashier about the large number of coins and was told that Healy frequently comes in to exchange coins and that Healy said he owns an arcade.
During the next two weeks after the neighbor’s report to police, detectives from the UTA police department opened an investigation into the allegations.
According to the probable cause statement, Healy was employed since 2014 as a fare equipment maintenance technician for UTA. His job gave him access to bus fare collection boxes.
UTA requires employees to disclose any secondary employment, and the investigation revealed that Healy had not reported any other jobs.
In the course of the investigation, the probable cause statement says, Healy was observed on 10 different days, between Sept. 12 and Sept. 27, entering UTA buses in various UTA garages and removing fare boxes, which he put in his van.
As part of the investigation, detectives were monitoring Healy’s bank deposits, which frequently were in the form of hundreds of dollars in coins or one-dollar bills.
Healy’s bank deposits steadily increased, the probable cause statement says, with his December 2018 deposits totaling a little over $12,000; January 2019 deposits totaling $16,466, with several separate deposits on the same day; February deposits totaling more than $28,000; and March deposits totaling more than $44,000.
Healy has been charged with:
- Pattern of unlawful activity, a second-degree felony OR theft, a second-degree felony
- Money laundering, a second-degree felony
- Seven counts of misuse of public money, a third-degree felony
