Fraud Arrest of Dozens of Retired NYPD Officers Only the Beginning
Hundreds of first responders may end up being prosecuted for faking illnesses to receive disability.
The retired New York City police officers and firefighters showed up for their psychiatric exams disheveled and disoriented, most following a nearly identical script.

They had been coached on how to fail memory tests, feign panic attacks and, if they had worked during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to talk about their fear of airplanes and entering skyscrapers, prosecutors said. And they were told to make it clear they could not leave the house, much less find a job.

But their Facebook pages told investigators a starkly different story, according to an indictment and other court papers.

Former police officers who had told government doctors they were too mentally scarred to leave home had posted photographs of themselves fishing, riding motorcycles, driving water scooters, flying helicopters and playing basketball.

“The brazenness is shocking,” Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said on Tuesday.
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The online photos, along with intercepted phone calls and the testimony of undercover officers, were evidence of what officials said was the largest fraud ever perpetrated against the Social Security disability system, a scheme stretching back to 1988 in which as many as 1,000 people — many of them officers and firefighters already collecting pensions from the city — were suspected to have bilked the federal government out of an estimated $400 million.

Joseph Esposito, a retired New York police officer, appeared at the Manhattan district attorney's office on Tuesday.

An indictment unsealed on Monday by the Manhattan district attorney’s office charges 106 people, four of whom are accused of running the scheme. The group was headed by Raymond Lavallee, 83, a Long Island lawyer who started his career as an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and once served as a senior Nassau County prosecutor, court papers said.

Mr. Lavallee worked most closely with two men: Thomas Hale, 89, a pension consultant who investigators say filled out applications, and Joseph Minerva, 61, a former police officer who works for the Detectives’ Endowment Association.

The organizers received cash kickbacks of more than $28,000 from each applicant, money that was taken from the recipients’ first check from the Social Security Administration, prosecutors said.
Scores of former police officers and firefighters were arrested on Tuesday and brought in handcuffs to State Supreme Court in Manhattan, where they were arraigned before Acting Justice Daniel Fitzgerald on charges of grand larceny. They are accused of collecting between $30,000 and $50,000 a year.

Many of the 72 city police officers and eight firefighters named in the 205-count indictment had blamed the Sept. 11 attacks for what they described as mental problems: post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and severe depression.

“It’s a particularly cynical part of the charged scheme that approximately half the defendants falsely claimed that their psychiatric disabilities were caused by the 9/11 attacks,” Mr. Vance said at a news conference.

Yet investigators said the accused were living full lives and in many cases were holding jobs in private security, construction and landscaping.

Several of the defendants documented their activities on Facebook. The bail letter includes photographs culled from the Internet that show one former officer riding a water scooter and others working at jobs including helicopter pilot and martial arts instructor. One is shown fishing off the coast of Costa Rica and another sitting astride a motorcycle, while another appeared in a television news story selling cannoli at the Feast of San Gennaro in Manhattan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/nyregion/retired-new-york-officers-and-firefighters-charged-in-social-security-scheme.html?_r=0

what a way to Protect and Serve!

Seems they were Protecting and Serving themselves.
I think some prison time will teach them.

there is no industry that can operate without any frauds in its midst....


at least they were caught, hope people don't start supporting the idea of discontinuing police services because of the reality that some people misuse it,,,,lol

They must have learned that by watching congress

Hey, it's the Obama era. Hope and change.

Hope in one hand and look for change in the other.

Which will fill the fastest?