The CEO and owner of a Staten Island oil distribution company was convicted of grand larceny last Thursday for scamming the Metropolitan Transit Authority by selling low quality transmission fluid for use in city buses and claiming it to be premium Castrol Transynd.

Joseph Ioia, CEO of New York Commercial Lubricants Inc. admitted to selling more than $800,000 worth of cheap oil to the New York City Transit Authority and Metropolitan Transit Authority from May 2010 to March 2011 by pretending he was actually peddling Castrol Transynd, which he was not authorized to sell, prosecutors said.

Ioia was charged with second-degree grand larceny but wound up agreeing to a plea deal in Manhattan Supreme Court on lesser charges of third-degree grand larceny. He will receive three months jail, which he can serve during the weekends, and five years probation. Ioia must also pay nearly $864,000 in restitution to the agencies before his December 17 sentencing. He had faced five to 15 years in prison on second-degree grand larceny charges.

“I knowingly and intentionally provided New York City Transit Authority with a product other than Castrol,” Ioia told Judge Richard Carruthers. He also admitted to falsifying product batch numbers, requests for inspection forms and other paperwork in the scam.