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Holbrook resident Thomas Caputo, age 56, who became the highest-paid MTA employee in 2018 through the overtime scheme, was sentenced to eight months in prison for conspiracy to commit federal program fraud.
Caputo was also sentenced to three years of supervised release with six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service.
US Attorney Damian Williams said that Caputo submitted time reports falsely claiming to have worked hundreds of hours of overtime that he didn’t work, including time spent participating in a bowling league.
Two of Caputo’s co-conspirators, John Nugent and Joseph Balestra, were previously sentenced to prison time after pleading guilty.
“The sentences the court imposed on the participants in this egregious overtime fraud scheme send a clear message: If you commit overtime fraud, you will go to prison,” Williams said. “The public expects that public employees will show up and receive honest pay for an honest day’s work, not line their pockets with double-time or time-and-a-half pay while out bowling.”
Williams said that Caputo, Nugent, Balestra, Frank Pizzonia, and Joseph Ruzzo schemed to fraudulently receive thousands of dollars in compensation from the MTA by falsely claiming to have worked hundreds of voluntary overtime hours that in fact, they did not work.
The overtime pay they claimed led to significant increases in their salary and led to them being among the highest-paid MTA employees, and in the case of Caputo, the highest-paid MTA employee in 2018.
According to prosecutors, the group frequently volunteered for overtime and then claimed to have been working lucrative overtime shifts at times when they were in fact at home or at other non-work locations, such as, in the case of Caputo, a bowling alley.
Specifically, in 2018, Caputo had a base salary of approximately $117,000, but he was paid $461,000 by the MTA, including approximately $344,000 in overtime that he did not work.
That salary made Caputo’s pay higher than even the chairman of the MTA that year.
When sentencing Nugent, Judge Paul Engelmayer stated that they participated in “an orgy of overtime fraud that was carried out on an epic scale,” adding that “Just punishment requires a substantial sentence including real prison time” and that “The message has to be, if you get caught faking overtime, there will be significant consequences and you will spend time in prison.”
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