Queens man gets 2 months in prison in LIRR overtime scam
Frank Pizzonia was the last of five current or former LIRR employees to be sentenced on charges from the February 2021 federal indictment. Credit: Newsday File/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
A Long Island Rail Road track worker was sentenced to 2 months in prison Wednesday for his part in what prosecutors say was a conspiracy to defraud the LIRR out of tens of thousands of dollars of overtime pay that wasn’t earned.
U.S. District Court Judge Paul Engelmayer on Wednesday sentenced Frank Pizzonia, 54, after Pizzonia pleaded guilty in January to a conspiracy charge.
Pizzonia, of Howard Beach, also will serve 3 months’ home confinement, 2 years of supervision, and 200 hours of community service, court officials said.
Pizzonia’s attorney, Joseph Corozzo, did not respond to a request for comment. Federal prosecutors declined to comment.
MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said the authority is working to ensure that Pizzonia's fraudulently gained time and compensation is not factored into his pension payout.
“The MTA has no tolerance for timekeeping fraud, which is a violation of the trust the public places in employees to be honest about the work they perform," Donovan said.
Pizzonia was the last of five current or former LIRR employees to be sentenced on charges from the February 2021 federal indictment. It said that the men “fraudulently overstated the number of hours that they had worked, and thereby each received over $5,000 in payments for hours that they did not in fact work.”
The indictment stemmed from an investigation led by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Office of the Inspector General, after alarmingly high overtime figures surfaced at the MTA in 2019.
Co-defendant Thomas Caputo, 57, claimed more than $340,000 in overtime in 2018, on top of his nearly $120,000 salary, making him the agency’s highest paid employee that year. He pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to 8 months in prison in February.
In January, Pizzonia admitted he wasn’t at work on several occasions when he filed phony overtime slips in 2018 and 2019. In 2018, he claimed to have worked 3,780 hours in overtime for $305,000 in total pay.
Pizzonia is suspended from the LIRR without pay.
Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.
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