Long Island Railroad employees implicated in a years-long fake ID scam made upwards of three-times the overtime pay of their honest colleagues — with one foreman even walking away with more than the train line’s president was paid in a year.
The three-dozen employees accused in the scam made an average of 1.3 and 2.7 times the overtime pay of their colleagues in 2024, an analysis from Newsday found.
And some even made more — including gang foreman Craig Murray, who allegedly raked in $220,073 in overtime last year.
With his $124,361 salary, Murray made $345,779 in 2024. That’s more than the LIRR’s president makes in a year, according to Newsday.
The scam saw at least 36 LIRR workers use fake work IDs to swipe themselves and their co-conspirators in and out of work whether they were on the job or not.
That allowed many to log hours — and pay — when they weren’t working at all.
Some workers allegedly even had machines that produced the bogus ID cards, and ran a ring making and selling them to each other.
Many would charge people playing hooky for swipe-ins to make it appear as if they were actually on the clock, the probe found.
The scheme allegedly ran from 2021 to Aug. 2024, with investigators opening a probe in 2022 following a spate of complaints
Employees like Murray allegedly engaged in the scheme even made up half of the LIRR’s top 10 overtime earners in 2023.
The accusations emerged Thursday in a report from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s inspector general office, alleging a “widespread culture of fraud and time abuse” at three LIRR facilities: Richmond Hill, Ronkonkoma and Manhattan West Side.
At least 24 of the 36 implicated in the scam allegedly admitted to participating.
Murry previously told The Post he had no idea about the scam and never participated, but admitted hearing “rumors” that some employees cheated out extra hours that way.
Employees proven to have participated in the scam will face “severe punishment,” LIRR president Robert Free told Newsday.
Some have already been made to forfeit hundreds of thousands of dollars, while others have been suspended for months without pay.
No criminal charges have been filed yet, but the case has been referred to three district attorneys’ offices.
The LIRR is heavily funded by New York taxpayers as part of the MTA.
Read the full article here