| The disability topper was a huge scandal for the Long Island Rail Road in recent years: << About 600 Long Island Rail Road retirees will lose their disability benefits after a federal agency voted last week to halt the payments, amid a sweeping investigation into what prosecutors have called a major disability fraud scheme, according to agency documents and officials. The agency, the United States Railroad Retirement Board, which over more than a decade granted disability benefits to hundreds of railroad retirees based on fraudulent medical evidence with little scrutiny, took the action on Thursday during a five-minute meeting at its headquarters in Chicago. The vote approved procedures under which the board will cut off the benefits, which, officials said, are costing the agency $2 million a month. >> A bunch of the people involved have gone to prison over this fraud: << The first terminations came several weeks after the doctor who submitted what prosecutors have said was the bogus medical evidence underlying the applications of the roughly 600 retired railroad workers pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to fraud and conspiracy. The doctor, Peter J. Ajemian, told the judge in January that the retirees were not in fact disabled. … Dr. Ajemian, who was sentenced to eight years in prison, is among 24 people — including retirees, another doctor and two facilitators — who since 2011 have pleaded guilty to federal charges resulting from of the investigation. Charges against eight other people indicted in the case are pending, and the investigation by the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors in Manhattan, officials have said, is continuing. >> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/nyregion/600-long-island-r... |