Five of the highest-paid Long Island Rail Road employees were indicted in February on overtime fraud and conspiracy charges. Three of them now plan to enter guilty pleas.
Federal prosecutors said the workers allegedly submitted phony timesheets that claimed “almost physically impossible amounts of overtime.”
A track foreman from Suffolk County is among those who plan to plead guilty. Investigators said he took home over $240,000 in overtime pay alone in 2018 by claiming he worked over 2,900 hours of overtime.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority began cracking down on overtime abuse in 2019, after a watchdog group uncovered $400 million in overtime payments the year before.