Metro

LIRR pension scammer testifies how workers gamed the system by pitching disability ‘narratives’

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It was all aboard the gravy train at the LIRR as greedy workers traded tips on how to retire early with lucrative pensions by faking career-ending physical ailments, a crooked ex-employee testified yesterday.

Former signalman Steven Gagliano took the stand in Manhattan federal court as the leadoff witness in the first trial stemming from the massive, $1 billion disability scheme that the FBI busted in 2011.

He’s among 25 people who have pleaded guilty in the case, many of whom — like Gagliano — agreed to cooperate with the feds in a bid for leniency.

On trial are Dr. Peter Lesniewski, who is accused of falsely certifying disabilities for hundreds of workers, former LIRR union president Joseph Rutigliano and Marie Baran, a former employee of the Railroad Retirement Board, who allegedly helped workers fill out paperwork.

Gagliano chronicled a culture of corruption in which the long-running scam was common knowledge among the railroad’s work force, with employees comparing notes on how to game the system at retirement parties and elsewhere.

“It was discussed openly,” he told jurors.

Gagliano also detailed how he plotted for more than two years to retire at age 50, racking up hundreds of hours of overtime to boost his benefits and creating a “paper trail” of needless medical appointments and tests.

Under questioning by prosecutor Justin Weddle, Gagliano admitted that the array of aches and pains he falsely claimed “sounds like someone in a wheelchair.”

“Is that you?” Weddle asked.

“No, sir,” Gagliano answered with a smirk.

In fact, Gagliano said, he took part in a 30-mile, fund-raising bike tour around Manhattan just six weeks after retiring in 2006, then jetted to South America so he could hike the Andes Mountains.

He was busted after he unwittingly met an unidentified law-enforcement agent while bicycling in a Long Island park, then blabbed that he was an LIRR retiree and was training for an upcoming ride.

During opening statements, prosecutor Daniel Tehrani said the defendants “made a lucrative business” out of the alleged fraud, with Lesniewski pocketing between $800 and $1,000 each for phony “narratives” of workers’ purported disabilities.

Rutigliano and Baran also charged $1,000 a pop to help the scammers prepare “application after application filled with lies,” with Rutigliano often cutting-and-pasting portions of his own phony disability papers, Tehrani said.

“He retired to a life of golf, but continued to work,” Tehrani said of Rutigliano.

“He helped others cheat the same way he did.”

rcalder@nypost.com