More than a dozen city employees, including NYPD traffic enforcement agents and FDNY emergency medical personnel, were charged in a series of insurance fraud schemes totaling half a million dollars in false benefit claims, the city’s Department of Investigation announced Tuesday.
The 13 current and former employees allegedly filed fake claim forms with AFLAC with fabricated signatures of supervisors and doctors, asserting they needed assistance due to a disability that prevented them from working, according to the DOI.
Some of them continued to work and collect their city salaries — even putting in for overtime pay at the same time — according to the charges.
“We depend on honesty and integrity from all our public servants and these workers failed us,” DOI Commissioner Mark G. Peters said in a statement. “Our independent investigation will continue to root out this corrupt behavior with more arrests expected to follow.”
The employees, who turned themselves in Tuesday morning, included 10 FDNY EMS supervisors, paramedics and EMTs, and three NYPD traffic enforcement agents.
Former FDNY EMT Marc Mastros, 37, of Queens, was charged with collecting the most in fraudulent benefits at $118,630, according to DOI. He started working for the FDNY in September 1999 and resigned in March 2014.
The DOI expects to arrest even more city employees as part of the scheme.
