Posted on 01/07/2014 8:17:30 AM PST by Second Amendment First
Eighty retired New York City police officers and firefighters were charged on Tuesday in one of the largest Social Security disability frauds ever, a sprawling decades-long scheme in which false mental disability claims by as many as 1,000 people cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, according to court papers.
Scores of those charged in the case essentially stole in plain sight, according to a 205-count indictment and a bail letter, collecting between $30,000 and $50,000 a year based on fabricated claims that they were completely incapacitated by serious psychiatric disorders. Many said that their actions in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were responsible for their psychiatric conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety or depression.
But their Facebook pages and other websites, according to the court papers, tell a starkly different story.
The bail letter includes photographs culled from the Internet that show one riding a jet ski and others working at jobs ranging from helicopter pilot to 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 on Mulberry Street in Manhattan.
Indeed, prosecutors charge that they were coached by the scheme’s organizers to appear disheveled and disoriented during interviews, in which doctors initially evaluated their disability applications before finding them to be mentally disabled and incapable of any work whatsoever.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yup
I love Facebook.
Reminds me a little of “Copland.”
How stupid people can be thinking only their friends will see what they are posting.
Why am I supposed to believe that the WTC, apart from all other destroyed buildings, was constructed entirely out of noxious carcinogenic chemicals?
Just one fraud scheme, in just one city.
Now multiply that by hundreds of cities, multiple schemes, all across the nation.
And yet...
These ‘trained professionals’ are the ONLY ones who can be trusted with firearms.
This is what a socialist nation promotes..misuse of huge taxpayer’s funds.
When money is so generously distributed by government, state and local authorities it stands to reason that many will try to take advantage of the system.
So many already do and get away with it. It’s known as trickle down dishonesty.
Yes. They smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for thirty years, but when they get emphysema, they are absolutely positive its because of the single half-day they spent on the perimeter of ground zero.
Their union appointed doctor backs them 120%.
We need to pay public servants more to prevent this sort of thing.
Not a chance. They will join King Obama's gestapo squad. You know, the TSA, HHA, etc.
I know some people on FB who accept any friend request they receive, even from people they don't know. They brag that they have over a thousand friends or more. All someone needs to do is just drop the dime on them. There was a cop in Westchester County NY who was suspended for making remarks about the president on FB.
I was not a rubber stamp with any of these people. My personal feelings were not involved, could they work was what I had to determine. The greater part of these people had severe physical disabilities and only a few had mental problems/disabilities that wouldn't permit them to work.
I was sure of my evaluation to the point I could support it in court if it came to that. These investigators would have access to the evaluation these men had and would know if it had been a proper one. PTSD and Bipolar (used to be called Manic-Depressive) and ADD + other letters attached to that, and Autism, diagnoses are thrown around like candy now.
charges a total of 106 people, four of whom are accused of running the scheme. That group includes an 83-year-old lawyer who has worked as an F.B.I. agent and a prosecutor, an 89-year-old pension consultant and a 61-year-old official of the union that represents New York City police detectives
the lawyer, Raymond Lavallee; the pension consultant, Thomas Hale; the detectives’ union official, John Minerva; and Joseph Esposito, 64, a retired New York police officer who recruited many of the other defendants — were charged with first- and second-degree grand larceny and attempted second-degree grand larceny
traced the scheme’s origins to 1988, and estimated that the retirees collected fraudulent disability awards ranging from approximately $50,000 to $500,000
we estimate that over the 26 years of the charged scheme, fraudulent claims were filed with respect to as many as 1,000 individuals totaling as much as $400 million in benefits received
likely that as many as 50 more people would be charged in the coming weeks with making fraudulent claims
Ruh roh. SSDI must be on its last breath if NYT was allowed to publish this. It’s like a shout out to other wealthy scammers that they better leave the faux claims to the lower class.
Posting on FaceBook is like having a government surveillance camera installed in your house. I doubt the 4th amendment has any meaning to these people.. and by extension, the rest of our Constitutionally protected rights. For them, it’s the right to ‘feel good’ while plundering everything in sight.
The bigger your union the more carcinogenic the building is.
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