REDWOOD CITY — A former high-level employee and a one-time contractor for Caltrain have been charged with felonies after being accused of building themselves secret mini-apartments inside two Peninsula train stations, all on the taxpayers’ dime, according to authorities and court records.
Even after one of the living spaces was discovered by employees, it would be some two years before an anonymous tipster sent authorities to the other “residence.”
One of the apartments — constructed inside Burlingame’s train station, built in 1894 and designated a historic landmark in California — reportedly featured a kitchen, shower, plumbing and security cameras. Prosecutors said the two defendants worked together to keep the invoices for the work below $3,000 each to avoid scrutiny and skirt procedures meant to discourage such fraud.
Joseph Vincent Navarro, 66, formerly of the Bay Area and currently living in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and Seth Andrew Worden, a 61-year-old resident of Oceanside in San Diego County, have been charged in San Mateo County Superior Court with misusing public funds.
Worden was arraigned Wednesday and released on his own recognizance, court records show. Navarro was scheduled to be arraigned April 29.
“The misuse of public funds for private use is a violation of the law, Caltrain policy and the public’s trust,” Caltrain Executive Director Michelle Bouchard said in a statement. “Caltrain investigates every claim of such misconduct, and in cases where there is evidence of unlawful conduct by an employee or a contractor, we immediately act to rectify the situation and hold the individuals who are responsible accountable.”
According to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office, Navarro, formerly a deputy director for Caltrain, conspired with Worden and approved $42,000 in building expenses to remodel office space into a small apartment inside the Burlingame train station between 2019 and 2020.
The criminal complaint alleges that Worden used $8,000 in taxpayer funds to build himself similar living quarters inside the Millbrae train station.
Prosecutors allege Navarro and Worden ensured that no invoice surpassed $3,000, a spending threshold that would have required further authorization from Caltrain and TransAmerica Services Inc., the firm that employed Worden.
Worden was caught first in 2020 after employees discovered the converted space, authorities said. But the transit agency was reportedly unaware of Navarro’s place in Burlingame until an anonymous tip in 2022.
Navarro was fired after being confronted with the tip and reportedly admitted to “occasionally using the station as his residence,” prosecutors said — though they allege that he was using the small apartment as his primary residence. Caltrain then alerted the district attorney’s office about the potential for criminal charges.
San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe said the tactic of keeping the invoices under a specific amount “shows how clearly they knew what they were doing.”
“Even the small little things, if you take from the public and steal public funds, that’s a straight felony,” Wagstaffe said. “They were doing it during COVID and figured they could get away with it.”
Worden’s attorney, Jeffrey Hayden, declined comment on the case. If convicted, each defendant faces a maximum sentence of four years in prison.
While Caltrain and Wagstaffe lauded each other for their respective responses to addressing the confidential crash pads once they were found, one Peninsula contractor suggested that the scale of the transit agency and contracting firm could have affected how the illicit additions were constructed without anyone noticing.
Rustam Kholov, manager of San Mateo-based United Pro Handyman Services, said a closer look at the invoices might have revealed a stark gap between what was being charged and what that work typically costs. For instance, he said a residential conversion of a garage would run a tab of at least $15,000 for labor alone.
Kholov added that if someone with a trained eye detected the construction and searched for a permit for the location but found none, that would have been another red flag .
On Friday morning, light drizzle fell around Burlingame’s 130-year-old train station as Caltrain’s express service rumbled past a handful of passengers waiting for the next local.
The interior of the rust-colored Mission Revival structure, called “the prettiest on the line” according to a historical plaque by the Native Sons of the Golden West, remained closed to the public. The Burlingame Hillsborough Historical Museum makes its home in the station’s former passenger waiting room but is closed while rebuilding its displays.
Other parts of the station were also closed with heavily covered windows. The illicit living spaces in Burlingame and Millbrae have long since been cleared out, with no obvious signs of their previous occupations.
Staff writers Nollyanne Delacruz and Karl Mondon contributed to this report.
