Ten Long Island Rail Road employees have been charged with federal fraud for a pension scheme in which workers claimed disability at early retirement and received additional benefits, NBC4 in New York reports:
Ten Long Island Rail Road workers collecting disability pensions are facing federal charges as part of the government's ongoing investigation into an alleged fraud of the LIRR's pension system that may have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. [...]
The arrests are the latest development in an investigation into a massive fraud scheme dating back to 1998 in which nearly every LIRR worker who claimed to be disabled upon early retirement received a disability pension.
Federal prosecutors have said the scheme could cause the federal Railroad Retirement Board, a federal agency that administers benefit programs for railroad workers and their families, to pay more than $1 billion in unwarranted disability payments if disbursed in full.