NEW YORK — A former Long Island Railroad foreman was sentenced to five months in prison on Thursday for his role in a massive overtime fraud case involving Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees.
The New York Daily News reports John Nugent, 51, pleaded guilty for his part in a case in which he claimed to work long shifts while not actually showing up. In 2018, he filed for 2,918 hours of overtime — which would be almost eight hours a day, every day of the year — and made a total of $350,000. Prosecutors couldn’t prove that all was fraudulent and only charged him with 420 hours of false charges.
Nugent was part of a group of five workers involved the overtime case [see “Digest: Five MTA employees charged …,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 3, 2020]. As a foreman, he could approve his own overtime with little oversight, according to prosecutors. Two other workers have entered guilty pleas but have not been sentenced, while another is reportedly negotiating a plea deal. The only one in the group to plead not guilty, Frank Pizzonia, is scheduled for trial in March.
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