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The BART scheme started to unravel after one man tried to make a deal with police.

Freshly arrested, the man decided to bargain using an interesting, unknown bit of information. He told police there was a racket being carried out on BART trains, involving paid-for vandalism of the transit system's seats.

"He said, 'I’ll tell you what, there’s this little scam going on over here that I know about, because I was one of the guys that they hired ... they’d pay us, like, $2 a slash, or $3 a slash,’ something like that," longtime BART spokesman and author Michael Healy recalled.

It was the early '80s at the time, and the young transit system was just under 10 years old.

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At first, the question about the scam, as it was posed to Healy earlier this month, seemed too outlandish to be true.

In a live event for the podcast "East Bay Yesterday," with Healy as guest, a call for questions on Twitter unearthed this curious piece of BART history.

"This next question is so bizarre, and I just love it," prefaced East Bay Yesterday host, Liam O'Donoghue. "Here’s the question, I’m going to just read it verbatim as it came to me through Twitter."

"Apparently there was a racket at one point where gangs would slash seats with knives so they’d have to be re-upholstered, generating overtime pay for BART workers and extra orders for materials suppliers. Specific patterns would be cut in so they’d know who to pay for the 'favor,’" O'Donoghue read.

"Is that true?” O'Donoghue asked of Healy.

"I don't deny it," he replied.

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The initial contract to clean and repair damaged train car seats was awarded to Service Systems Inc. in August 1979 for $40,000.

Stanley Hurwitz was the owner at the time, and the Pacheco-based company was tasked with repairing BART's seats for a fee of $16.50 each. (Or, in today's cash, just under $48 a seat.)

The nominal amount of $40,000 seemed enough at the time, but then vandalism on BART seats soon was on the rise.

"We noticed that there was a spike in the vandalism of the cushions, and it was kinda creeping up," said Healy, "and over a several month period — it was really sky-high — and there were these slashes in the seats. And then we would send the cushions out to this guy and they’d repair them."

The re-upholstery services were so much in need, it seemed, that the following year, BART decided to extend the contract — and increase the contract to $60,000, The Chronicle reported. In January 1981, another jump in the number of vandalized seats caused BART to once again extend and increase its contract with Service Systems, this time for $75,000, or $221,170 today. (The San Francisco Examiner estimated the contract amounts to be even higher — $100,000 in 1980, and $175,000 in 1981.)

The slashes were always the same, however. One slash on the back of the seat, with another slash in the front.

READ ALSO: These are the craziest secrets in the history of BART

But one man cracked after being arrested on an unrelated charge, and he let police know about the scam, according to Healy. Afterward, both BART police and the Concord Police Department began to investigate. A sting operation ensued with an undercover investigator infiltrating the company and "on at least a dozen occasions," the complaint alleged, police saw four suspects slashing BART seats.

The Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office issued a warrant and BART police arrested four people in the scheme: Hurwitz, who was 46 at the time, his son Joseph, 19, and two employees of the company, John Rucker, 23, and David Fisher, also 23. The group was charged with grand theft, felony vandalism and criminal conspiracy in March 1981.

It was estimated that "possibly 85 percent of the more than 7,000 BART train cushions damaged since August 1979" was the work of this company, the Examiner reported at the time.

All said and done, BART had paid the company $115,000 for the repairs, a total of about $339,128 in today's money.

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A year later, in 1982, Rucker and Fisher pleaded no contest to charges of conspiring to slash BART's seats.

The Examiner reported that Rucker was to serve a year in county jail, while Fisher received 190 days, both with three years' probation. Both were ordered to pay restitution.

The elder Hurwitz also pleaded no contest to the charges and was sentenced to a year in jail by September 1982, and also given three years' probation, and ordered to pay restitution. He was "free on his own recognizance" at the time of sentencing, but was given six months' credit for time served at the state Department of Corrections facility in Vacaville, the Examiner wrote.

Charges against Joseph Hurwitz were dropped.

BART filed a $2.16 million civil suit against Hurwitz, which was pending in Alameda County Superior Court as of 1982. It's unclear what became of the case, and searches for news of the suit came up empty.

To hear more from Michael C. Healy, author of "BART: The Dramatic History of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System," including what it's like to be in the Transbay Tube during an earthquake, to the time when there was a proposal for a bar car on BART, and a (too-brief) mention of a brothel once run out of the Ashby station, head to the latest episode of the "East Bay Yesterday" podcast, here.

Dianne de Guzman is a Senior Digital Editor at SFGATE. Email: dianne.deguzman@sfgate.com