Some Long Island Rail Road Employees Abusing Time Cards to Get Paid When Not Working

Long Island Rail Road train. Photo credit: en. wikipedia.org

NEW YORK –– The MTA Inspector General's office announced this week that a three-year investigation uncovered a "culture of fraud and abuse."

In a press release this week, MTA Inspector General Daniel Cort said that “the results of a nearly three-year investigation . . . uncovered a “culture of fraud and abuse at three Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) facilities that included the use of duplicate ID cards to swipe colleagues in or out when they were not present.”

The duplicate cards were sold to employees from $5.00 to $40.00 by colleagues who purchased the equipment to make them from Amazon. Thirty-six LIRR employees, including supervisors who have the title of “gang foreman” participated in the scheme. The MTA OIG learned that the activity occurred at the Ronkonkoma, Richmond Hill, and West Side LIRR locations.

In discussions with employees, one of the gang foreman told colleagues to refrain from telling anyone about the cards, adding that “What happens at K.O. (Ronkonkoma) stays at K.O.” Another gang foreman said “they can’t do nothing to us.”

It appears that the abuse of the time cards was open and flagrant. The OIG tells of one example when “a gang foreman swiped in for a weekend overtime shift wearing a bathing suit and flip flops and told his employees ‘Don’t bother looking for me. I’ll be next to my pool with a margarita.'”

The LIRR received the OIG report in June 2025 and took just about all of the perpetrators off the job without pay, while suspending some employees from two to nine months unless those employees had agreed to an administrative trial. Three employees were demoted, and 12 of the 36 employees have resigned or retired. Eight of those who resigned or retired faced disciplinary charges.

MTA Inspector General Daniel Cort said “These employees, including supervisors who should have been enforcing the rules, stole countless hours of paid time. The investigation revealed a widespread lack of ethics and contempt for the timekeeping regulations in these LIRR facilities. I hope that our investigation and the serious punishments handed down by LIRR management will help combat the culture of corruption that has festered too long at these facilities.”

For more information about these incidents and the investigation, please read or download the full press release below.