NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of Long Island Rail Road employees may have cheated their way to big pensions through a $1 billion fraud by paying off doctors to say they were unable to work, authorities said Thursday as they revealed that some supposedly disabled retirees were spotted regularly playing tennis and golf, shoveling heavy snow and working out for hours at a gym.
Eleven people, including two orthopedists and a former union official, have been charged with conspiracy in a decadelong fraud that authorities say poisoned the pension system used by employees of the nation's largest commuter railroad.
Janice Fedarcyk, the head of New York's FBI office, called it a "game where every retiree was a winner." U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the disability pension program was not designed to be "a feeding trough for the truly dishonest," but authorities say that's what happened.
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