LYNN — A school bus transportation company that has transported Lynn’s special education students for years has agreed to pay $2.4 million to settle allegations that it illegally conspired with a competitor to divide municipal contracts, inflate prices and falsely certify that its bids were not the product of collusion, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell announced Monday.

The settlement with Beacon Mobility Corporation, which operates through subsidiaries including Van Pool Transportation LLC and NRT Bus Inc., resolves allegations involving special education transportation contracts in Lynn, Saugus and Dedham.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, Beacon and another student transportation company agreed in 2022 not to compete against one another for contracts in certain municipalities. Instead, each company allegedly agreed to stay out of the other’s designated markets, allowing one company to become the sole bidder while limiting competition and increasing costs for school districts. The Attorney General did not identify the competing transportation company in court filings.

The Assurance of Discontinuance, which resolves the Attorney General’s allegations, states that Beacon subsidiaries had held Lynn’s in-district special education transportation contract since at least 2015.

Court documents also include excerpts from internal company emails. In one May 2022 message, a Beacon employee wrote that the company should not bid on the Saugus contract because it did not want to take work from the competing company, adding that the competitor would be coming to Lynn the following year.

The Attorney General alleges Beacon later became the only bidder on Lynn’s special education transportation contract beginning in August 2022 after submitting a required Certificate of Non-Collusion that falsely represented the bidding process had been competitive.

The Attorney General also alleges Beacon concealed its agreement with the competing company while seeking payment under the Lynn contract.

“When companies engage in unlawful collusion that increase costs for municipalities, it reduces their ability to fund other critical programs including our libraries, public safety agencies and schools,” Campbell said in a statement. “My office is committed to investigating and eliminating illegal anticompetitive agreements that harm our communities.”

Under the settlement, Beacon will pay $2.4 million, with most of the money distributed among Lynn, Saugus, and Dedham.

In addition to the financial settlement, Beacon agreed to maintain an antitrust compliance program for at least five years, notify the Attorney General’s Office of future acquisitions of transportation companies for the next decade, cooperate with future investigations, and report any attempts by competitors to engage in similar anticompetitive conduct.

Mayor Jared C. Nicholson said the settlement returns money that should have benefited students and taxpayers.

“This vendor’s corrupt exploitation of our district’s efforts to get some of our most vulnerable students to school is shameful,” Nicholson said. “We very much appreciate the Attorney General and her team for holding them accountable and returning their ill-gotten gains back to our taxpayers.”

Lynn Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Molly Cohen said the settlement reinforces the importance of fair competition.

“We appreciate the work of the attorney general in returning critical funding to our district,” Cohen said. “Providing transportation for our special-needs students requires a significant investment, and it is obviously important that the procurement process is conducted on a level playing field.”

Although unrelated to the Attorney General’s antitrust investigation, another dispute involving NRT Bus raised concerns in Lynn earlier this year.

Kristen Lally, a member of the Shoemaker Elementary School PTO board, said approximately 75 second-grade students were left waiting for buses that never arrived for a planned March field trip to North Shore Music Theatre despite the PTO having paid a $250 deposit days earlier.

“Seventy-five second graders were devastated,” Lally said.

Parents had collectively spent about $975 on theater tickets, and the students ultimately missed the performance. The PTO later paid for a replacement trip to the zoo so families would not have to pay for another field trip.

In an email to Lally following the canceled trip, a NRT operations manager apologized and acknowledged the company later learned the trip had been paid for but that the information “was never communicated internally.” The operations manager wrote that a breakdown in communication between the company’s billing and charter departments led to the cancellation and said NRT was implementing new procedures to ensure customers would be contacted before trips were canceled.

Lally said the company’s response prompted her to begin reviewing invoices that NRT claimed remained unpaid.

“They said, ‘We’ll credit you the $975 and your deposit against your balance.’ And then I said, ‘What balance are you talking about?’” Lally said. “That’s when they finally sent me all my invoices.”

After reviewing those records, Lally said she questioned several invoices dating back to 2024, including charges she believes had already been paid or involved canceled trips.

“It just seemed like their books were very messy. Like nobody was really keeping good track of what was happening,” she said.

Lally said she also discovered what she believes were altered PTO checks while reviewing the records. She said the matter was reported to police and later referred to an attorney.

Although the PTO later funded a replacement field trip for the students, Lally said families have still not received refunds for the missed theater performance.

Olivia Haydar contributed to this report.