Meet John Pigsley, AKA the Pigman, the Perfect Poster Boy for the MBTA

Behold, John P. Pigsley, the 300-pound poster boy for the modern MBTA.

Seldom has a name fitted a defendant more perfectly than “John P. Pigsley.”

Gaze upon Pigsley’s perp-walk photographs, taken as he waddled out of the federal courthouse Wednesday in his triple-XL tee shirt.

If you were a Hollywood director filming a movie about the MBTA, and you asked Central Casting to send over a bloated, corrupt hack who symbolized the endemic corruption of the T, John P. Pigsley would show up on the set.

And, if you believe the federal indictment against him, millions of dollars worth of stuff would soon start disappearing from your movie set.

How MBTA is John P. Pigsley?

They say that if you have a lemon, you should make lemonade. And so my modest proposal for the MBTA is to use this latest embarrassment as a recruiting tool for their wretchedly catastrophic hackerama.

In a few months, I could imagine driving the Expressway or the Pike and seeing Pigsley’s dissipated mug staring down at me from electronic billboards, as he points a lard-encased finger at the camera. Underneath would be a giant caption:

“I NEED YOU… FOR THE MBTA!”

Pigsley could also do 30-second TV spots, or drop-ins on social media:

“Hi, I’m John Pigsley. No really, that’s my name. You probably can’t imagine anything lamer or more dead-end than working for the MBTA. But take it from me, you can make millions – millions! — stealing from the MBTA. Just read my indictment, fill out your application today and you too could be stealing tomorrow!”

As you have probably heard, the T is having problems recruiting employees. It was not always this way. Back in the day when people in what the Democrats call “working-class” neighborhoods actually worked, instead of living large on the dole, it was a sweet thing to get “on the T.”

T jobs could be purchased from local hacks. The pols (or their bagmen) had what amounted to rate cards – a bus driver’s job cost next to nothing, for obvious reasons. But a no-show sinecure at the old power station in Southie might set you back some serious cash, because it was like dying and going to heaven.

Back then you could retire from the T with a full pension after 22 years – in your early 40’s in other words. But if no one you’ve ever known has ever had a real job, for generations, what’s the attraction of “working” for even 22 years?

Especially after the giant increases in every form of welfare across the board during the Panic. Now the T is offering signing bonuses – the equivalent of maybe six weeks of welfare checks, and for that The Man wants you to work the second shift, on weekends, and then take random drug tests on top of all those other indignities.

Good luck with that!

But the lesson of Pigsley and his aptly-named company, the Pigman Group, is that you can make drug-dealer-type big bucks doing absolutely nothing at the T.

You can even have a shady, dodgy past – no problem! In 2011, Pigsley had a company in New Hampshire that pleaded guilty to a felony count of kiting checks. So what?

It didn’t stop Pigsley’s meteoric rise to “assistant chief engineer of facilities” for Keolis, the company that contracts with the MBTA to run the system’s dreadful commuter-rail service.

According to the feds, Pigsley and his little piggy pal, who is now apparently going to testify against him, stole $8.5 million in public funds from the T’s contractor, Keolis.

Using Pigsley’s minion, they billed the MBTA, through Keolis, for more than $4 million. The taxpayers in the MBTA district allegedly bought Pigsley, among other things, nine trucks, seven Bobcats, a $54,000 camper and more than $1 million in home building supplies.

And blubbery “Big John” – for that is indeed his moniker – also ordered $4.5 million worth of copper wiring through Keolis, which he then sold to scrap yards, after which he forgot to report his windfall profits to the IRS.

Consider how much copper wiring you could get for $4.5 million.

I wrote a column recently about crews of illegal aliens – “Providence men,” as they’re always called – working the Home Depot circuit up and down the East Coast, ripping off what seemed to be huge amounts of wire, at $15,000-$20,000 per hei

But those undocumented Democrats must drive around scouting out their next score. Occasionally they get busted, and “Providence woman” has to show up to bail them out. Then they’re out their $1,000 bail when they don’t show up for court and… well, basically, stealing copper wire is almost a real job for these Third World banditos.

Compare this to how effortlessly Pigsley could steal copper wire, as outlined in the indictment:

“Keolis did not inventory or otherwise track copper wire purchases… PIGSLEY was therefore able to hide his theft of the copper wire by either personally picking up copper wire orders from vendors, or by having copper wire orders delivered to his Beverly home. PIGSLEY then personally transported the copper wire to scrap metal businesses, trading the wire for thousands of dollars several times a month, and sometimes more than once a day!”

What would “Providence men” think if they read that. Amigos, if only we could have Home Depot deliver the wire to our gringo-funded welfare motels. Maybe these fat americanos are not so estupido after all.

Stealing millions is great, but being on the T also provides you with other random opportunities for the five-finger discount. On Feb. 8, 2020, according to the feds, Pigsley emailed the day’s stealing instructions to his little piggy assistant and then added:

“Working on the derailment this morning. Will get you some stuff.”

Every year at his St. Patrick’s Day breakfast, Billy Bulger used to introduce the marshal of the parade, an MBTA employee named John “Whacko” Hurley.

“Whacko,” Bulger would intone. “The name says it all.”

And now we have John P. Pigsley of the Pigman Group. Pigsley. The name says it all.