Longtime LIRR employee sentenced to 8 months in prison in overtime fraud scheme

Longtime Long Island Rail Road employee Thomas Caputo was sentenced to eight months in prison Friday for his role in an overtime fraud scheme that made him the MTA’s highest-paid employee in 2018, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams announced Friday.

Caputo, 56, was sentenced for conspiracy to commit federal program fraud after he submitted time reports that falsely claimed he worked thousands of hours of overtime, which included time he spent playing in a bowling league, according to the United States Attorney's Office. He pleaded guilty last August.

“The sentences the court imposed on the participants in this egregious overtime fraud scheme send a clear message: If you commit overtime fraud, you will go to prison," Williams said. "The public expects that public employees will show up and receive honest pay for an honest day’s work, not line their pockets with double-time or time-and-a-half pay while out bowling.”

Prosecutors say Caputo, who was an LIRR employee responsible for track inspection, was paid $461,000 by the MTA in 2018 — his approximately $117,000 base salary, plus approximately $344,000 in overtime pay — which made him the agency’s highest-paid employee that year, more than even the chairman of the MTA. According to authorities, he falsely claimed to have worked approximately 3,864 overtime hours in addition to his 1,682 regular hours, an average of about 10 hours of overtime per day.

Read more: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/transit/2022/02/04/longtime-lirr-employee-sentenced-to-8-months-in-prison-in-overtime-fraud-scheme