Name: 5 MTA employees charged with fraud for overtime that earned them $1 million collectively: officials
Brand: pix11.com
SKU: pix11-com-36
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

5 MTA employees charged with fraud for overtime that earned them $1 million collectively: officials

preview

Posted: Dec 3, 2020 / 12:18 PM ESTUpdated: Dec 3, 2020 / 10:31 PM ESTThis is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.NEW YORK — Five current and former MTA employees could face prison time for federal fraud charges after they logged “extraordinary overtime hours” that collectively earned them over $1 million, officials said Thursday.Newly unsealed complaints revealed that four longtime Long Island Rail Road workers and one longtime New York City Transit worker are accused of submitting timesheets that falsely claimed they worked thousands of hours of overtime they did not actually work.Each of the men are charged with one count of federal fraud program fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.Thomas Caputo, Joseph Ruzzo, John Nugent and Joseph Balestra are named in the LIRR Complaint, while Michael Gundersen is named in the NYC Transit complaint.“These defendants … allegedly made themselves some of the highest-paid employees at the entire MTA by claiming extraordinary, almost physically impossible, amounts of overtime,” Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement.According to the complaints, the senior MTA workers were actually at home, or in some cases even bowling or on vacations, during the time they allegedly falsely claimed to be working overtime.The Office of the MTA Inspector General worked with investigators to review in detail the hours the men claimed to have worked.The investigation compared their time records with location information gathered from their cellphones, social media accounts, bank records, MTA building access card data, emails from their work and personal accounts and third-party witnesses, according to the MTA.For at least one of the defendants, the excessive overtime pay was the equivalent of working 10 extra hours daily, every day for a year, according to FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr.“This type of double-dealing directly contributes to rising MTA fares for the average, hardworking commuter,” Sweeney said.According to the complaints, Caputo claimed in 2018 to have worked approximately 3,864 overtime hours, making him the highest-paid employee at the MTA that year, even earning more than the MTA chairman at the time.Officials said Caputo was paid $461,000 in 2018, of which just $117,000 was his base salary and other forms of compensation apart from overtime.Caputo was an LIRR employee responsible for track inspection until his retirement in April 2019, the MTA said.Similarly, the four other defendants were each paid over $240,000 in just overtime in 2018, putting them within the top 12 highest-paid MTA employees for the year.Ruzzo, who retired in October 2019, along with Nugent and Balestra, who are still employed by the LIRR, were all foremen during the period of the alleged fraud, according to the MTA.Gunderson is a current NYC Transit employee who has been a maintenance supervisor since 2015.MTA Communications Director Tim Minton thanked the FBI and officials for their work.“We thank the FBI, Southern District of New York and MTA Inspector General for their diligent work on this matter. The alleged conduct by these MTA employees is an egregious betrayal of public trust.The MTA has implemented a number of aggressive overtime controls that substantially increase oversight and accountability — already resulting in a reduction of $105 million in overtime in 2019 alone and the implementation of a five-year plan to cut overtime costs by nearly $1 billion. We will continue to root out waste, fraud and abuse wherever it occurs and will continue cooperating fully with this critically important investigation.”Suggest a Correction✕× Close Ad

Posted: Dec 3, 2020 / 12:18 PM ESTUpdated: Dec 3, 2020 / 10:31 PM ESTThis is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.NEW YORK — Five current and former MTA employees could face prison time for federal fraud charges after they logged “extraordinary overtime hours” that collectively earned them over $1 million, officials said Thursday.Newly unsealed complaints revealed that four longtime Long Island Rail Road workers and one longtime New York City Transit worker are accused of submitting...

5 MTA employees charged with fraud for overtime that earned them $1 million collectively: officials

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS