California High-Speed Rail Bills Tie Late-Night Rides to CEO’s Street

Consultants charged California’s high-speed rail project for repeated late-night rides to or from the Folsom street where agency CEO Ian Choudri owns a home. The billing records establish the destinations, timing and connection to the publicly funded project, but do not identify every passenger, explain what work occurred or establish whether Choudri was present.

The records, drawn from nearly 6,000 pages of invoices and expense claims submitted by KPMG and law firm Nossaman, cover work from September 2024 through January 2026. They include a dozen rides involving consultants Thierry Prate and Brent Butzin to or from the residential street, plus another dozen involving nearby restaurants and bars. Many pickups occurred late at night or early in the morning, including two after 1 a.m. One KPMG description called a ride to the residence “related to work with Ian.” Choudri, Prate and Butzin did not respond to requests for comment reported with the investigation.

Receipts and travel forms told different stories

The central control problem is broader than any one address. Public reimbursement requires a documented chain showing who authorized a trip, its business purpose, whether it was permitted under the contract and whether its cost was reasonable. Five of Butzin’s travel forms described meetings at the rail authority in Sacramento, while the attached receipts documented travel to restaurants and other locations in Folsom.

That mismatch defeats a basic invoice check. A reviewer who examines only the stated meeting purpose sees a different itinerary from the one recorded by the rideshare receipts. Advance authorization is supposed to reconcile those details before the public pays, rather than serve as paperwork reconstructed after travel has occurred.

The rail project’s independent inspector general found that such controls were repeatedly missing. Auditors examined approximately $1.15 million, about half of the more than $2 million in travel costs paid across four consulting firms. They found $680,500 without documented advance approval and identified $592,900 as unallowable under state regulations or contract terms. The latter figure is not the project’s total travel spending; it is the portion of the reviewed expenses found unallowable.

The review also found that contract managers sometimes approved costs because an executive had reportedly requested the travel or because staff assumed senior management wanted it. Yet the inspector general concluded that the CEO could not override contract requirements. A functional approval system therefore needs more than a signature box: reviewers must have both the information and institutional authority to reject a claim.

The board added a check on executive authority

The authority’s board has since gone beyond revising travel forms. In a 7-2 vote, it removed Choudri’s unilateral authority to sign and manage contracts below $25 million and required in-house lawyers to approve or modify those contracts, according to CalMatters’ account of the board action. Contracts above that threshold already require board approval.

The authority also paused travel payments to KPMG, Nossaman, AECOM-Fluor Joint Venture and SYSTRA/TYPSA Joint Venture, began reviewing their claims and said it was seeking recovery of questionable payments. It plans to introduce a more detailed travel-approval form, create a uniform advance-approval process, define approved consultant office locations and expand training. KPMG has said it is reviewing expenses and will reimburse the authority as appropriate.

Travel is a relatively small category within more than $250 million directed to the four consulting contractors over two fiscal years. It is still a revealing control test because airfare, hotel bills and rides have timestamps, destinations and discrete receipts. If an agency cannot consistently reconcile those records with an approved business purpose, evaluating more complex legal, engineering and program-delivery invoices becomes harder.

The scale of the rail program raises the consequence of that weakness. The full system is currently estimated to cost between $126 billion and $231 billion, with full buildout expected by 2040. The Merced-to-Bakersfield segment is targeted for completion by 2033, while the inspector general has warned that the project could run out of money as soon as December 2027 without a solution to its cash needs.

The late-night rides alone do not establish fraud, personal use or misconduct. They show why a destination, an executive’s name and a vague meeting description cannot substitute for documented authorization. The inspector general plans to assess the authority’s corrective actions after March 2027, when the practical test will be whether reviewers can consistently deny unsupported expenses regardless of who reportedly requested the travel.

By Thomas Caldwell — AMI’s senior editor for mechanical and mobility engineering, covering vehicle electronics, systems integration, electrification, chassis systems, propulsion, and safety policy.