Former Metro Employees Sentenced for Stealing Thousands in Fares

A Former Metro Transit Police officer and Metro employee were sentenced following charges of stealing $500,000 from metro fare machines. 

The United States Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced Friday that the two local men, one from Woodbridge, were sentenced in Alexandria. 

A former Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) revenue technician, from Bowie, Md., and a former Metro Transit Police officer, from Woodbridge, were ordered to pay $472,679 in restitution for the theft.

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John Vincent Haile, 52, from Woodbridge, and Horace Dexter McDade, 58, pleaded guilty March 19 to theft concerning programs receiving federal funds and conspiring to commit money laundering. 

Haile was sentenced to 37 months in prison and McDade was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Both will have to serve a three-year term of supervised release. 

“These men were on the front lines of securing Metro’s fares, and they brazenly abused their positions—shift after shift, year after year—to steal half a million dollars from Metro and local taxpayers,” said U.S. Attorney MacBride in a prepared statement. “Now they will spend years in prison paying for their greed." 

Haile was hired by the Metro Transit Police Department in 1997 and provided protection and security for revenue technicians as they traveled throughout the Metro system transporting funds to and from the Metro Revenue Collection Facility in Alexandria, said the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Records show McDade worked for WMATA since 1979.

“McDade and Haile stole approximately $500,000 in cash and coins that was paid to Metro by customers as fares. During their shifts collecting funds from Metro stations and transporting those funds to the collection facility in Alexandria, the two men would make an unscheduled stop and conceal bags of money at an underpass in the parking lot of a Marriott Courtyard Hotel on Eisenhower Avenue in Alexandria,” said the prepared statement. “Later in the evening after completing their shifts, McDade and Haile would return to the underpass in their personal cars to retrieve the money they had hidden.”

Haile admitted to laundering money through purchasing “an extraordinary amount of Virginia Lottery tickets” and paid for them with multiple bags of coins containing $500, said the Attorney’s office.

“McDade also admitted to laundering money through the Virginia Lottery system. In addition, McDade also laundered the proceeds of his thefts by making numerous cash and coin purchases at The Home Depot and Lowe’s,” said the release. “He also used the proceeds to pay off account balances at Zale’s and Sprint.”