More Charges in Alleged Long Island Rail Disability Scam

The U.S. plans to charge additional defendants in an alleged $1 billion pension disability scheme among retired New York commuter railway workers, an attorney for the government said.

Ten new defendants will be added to those charged last year, Danya Perry, a lawyer with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, said in court today. The government plans to file a superseding indictment and the investigation is continuing, she said.

The U.S. in October charged 11 people, including two doctors, with participating in a scheme that went back to 1998 in which Long Island Rail Road workers claimed to be disabled upon early retirement so they could collect extra pension benefits they weren’t entitled to.

Former railroad employees who claimed to be unable to work because they couldn’t stand, bend or grip objects without pain, among other symptoms, were seen playing golf, shoveling snow and taking a 400-mile bike ride, according to the complaint. The two doctors charged allegedly helped hundreds of people collect bogus disability benefits.

The case is U.S. v. Ajemian, 11-2748, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Editors: Fred Strasser, Andrew Dunn

To contact the reporter on this story: David McLaughlin in New York at dmclaughlin9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Pickering at jpickering@bloomberg.net