{"id":173009,"date":"2021-02-08T01:50:35","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T22:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/does-the-long-island-rail-road-have-a-mafia-problem\/"},"modified":"2021-02-08T01:50:35","modified_gmt":"2021-02-07T22:50:35","slug":"does-the-long-island-rail-road-have-a-mafia-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/does-the-long-island-rail-road-have-a-mafia-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"#Does the Long Island Rail Road have a mafia problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Does the Long Island Rail Road have a mafia problem?<\/strong>”
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Five current and former MTA employees \u2014 including the sons of two<\/em> convicted mob figures \u2014 now face federal conspiracy charges for alleged overtime fraud. Do the the feds need to probe for mafia infiltration of the Long Island Rail Road unions? <\/p>\n

The indictment is due in large measure to the Empire Center for Public Policy<\/a>, which blew the whistle on the MTA\u2019s massive overtime spending in April 2019<\/a>; center reports exposed three of the alleged fraudsters. <\/p>\n

One of the indicted workers, Thomas Caputo, the LIRR\u2019s chief measurement operator, took home a whopping $461,646 in 2018 to earn top spot as the MTA\u2019s highest-paid employee. The Post calculated that Caputo had to be on-duty around-the-clock to earn all that overtime even if he wasn\u2019t on the job.<\/p>\n

Per the indictment, Frank Pizzonia, son of Gambino captain Dominick \u201cSkinny Dom\u201d Pizzonia, schemed with Caputo and three others \u201cby repeatedly covering for one another\u2019s absences from work.\u201d Payroll records posted online by the Empire Center show Pizzonia earns $35 an hour and made $271,913 during 2019.<\/p>\n

And now The Post reveals that Joseph Balestra Jr., charged with phony billing for 3,000 hours of overtime in 2018, is the son of a convicted weapons dealer to four New York City crime families. Joseph Balestra Sr. did hard time in the 1990s for supplying sawed-off shotguns and submachine guns to mobsters involved in narcotics trafficking, counterfeiting, truck hijacking and armed robbery.<\/p>\n

Calling the fraudulent overtime just the tip of the iceberg, Tim Hoefer, the Empire Center\u2019s CEO, noted that the MTA\u2019s OT spending spiked in recent years because of inefficient union contracts. And it\u2019s worth noting that the LIRR overtime fraud boomed only after the center helped expose an earlier scam involving faked disabilities to boost pensions.<\/p>\n

As it seeks billions in federal aid, the MTA and its unions need to get a handle on this endemic corruption. The LIRR unions (at least) need to show they\u2019re not controlled by organized-crime families. Future collective-bargaining contracts must include safeguards against mob influence.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Does the Long Island Rail Road have a mafia problem?” Five current and former MTA employees \u2014 including the sons of two convicted mob figures \u2014 now face federal conspiracy charges for alleged overtime fraud. Do the the feds need to probe for mafia infiltration of the Long Island Rail Road unions? The indictment is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":173010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/02\/051019_LIRR_T_Caputo_VA_09_.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[92314,43,71006,76866,45339,71452,86935],"class_list":["post-173009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-2-7-21","tag-editorial","tag-fraud","tag-lirr","tag-mafia","tag-mta","tag-organized-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}