Long Island Railroad management sold tips on getting bogus disability claims OK’d to railroad workers, reports today’s NY Times.
A far-reaching investigation into the legitimacy of disabilities at the Long Island Rail Road took a new turn on Monday as witnesses at a state hearing said that L.I.R.R. managers had improperly provided inside help to workers seeking both federal and private disability insurance payments.
At the hearing here on Long Island, called by New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, state investigators produced an e-mail message from an L.I.R.R. official who, they said, sold advice while on the job on how to get disability payments, including such fine points as paying a doctor in cash for a medical evaluation, the best time to retire and how to avoid outside scrutiny.
LIRR workers have received around $250 million in claims since 2000. Ultimately taxpayers foot the bill.
“There appears to have been a cottage industry, if you will, that developed to expedite the granting of disability benefits,” Cuomo said. “This poses a classic scam on the taxpayer in my opinion — a complicated program administered by a number of different agencies and a concept that this is no one’s money.”