The finger-flipping ex-cop charged in a massive disability scam involving nearly 100 NYPD and FDNY retirees was blasted in court Thursday as a serial liar whose “most shameful claim” is that he went to Ground Zero to search for victims of the Sept. 11 terror attack.
“Every hero who responded on 9/11 received an exposure letter. Glenn Lieberman doesn’t have an exposure letter,” Manhattan prosecutor Bryan Serino said.
“And in the days and weeks after 9/11, the NYPD kept a list of who responded and where they went. Glenn Lieberman is not on that list.”
Lieberman even tried to use his bogus Sept. 11 service to claim a tax-free, three-quarters pay “line of duty” disability pension in 2010 after retiring with standard, half-pay benefits, Serino said.
“He’s layered fabrication on shameful fabrication,” Serino said.
The prosecutor listed a litany of other lies the 48-year-old allegedly told to collect more than $175,000 in Social Security benefits by falsely claiming he was too traumatized to work.
Lieberman claimed that he’s so emotionally troubled that he goes rarely goes outside, but has been to Europe and Central America more than 20 times, Serino said.
Lieberman, who shares a $1.5 million waterfront home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. with his girlfriend and their two kids, was ordered by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Daniel FitzGerald to FedEx his passport to the court when he returns home. He set bail at $25,000.
His bail was underwritten by celebrity bondsman Ira Judelson and on his way out of the courtroom, Lieberman complained: “I have kids and you guys are killing me in the papers.”
Defense lawyer Gerald McMahon insisted that there are “letters from six ranking police officers” attesting that Lieberman was at Ground Zero.
McMahon also said that “the most significant piece of evidence that I’ve seen so far is his Jet Ski picture,” adding that “it was taken seven years ago and taken at least two years before he applied for disability, and is entirely not relevant to this proceeding.”
Additional reporting by Kevin Fasick