Metro

10 tossed from LIRR ‘gravy train’

Ten more Long Island Rail Road retirees accused of participating in a massive, $1 billion disability-pension fraud were busted yesterday by federal authorities.

“The LIRR is a commuter railroad, not a gravy train,” charged Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara as he announced the arrests of the men, who he said “planned padded retirements built on lies and greed.”

The accused pension scammers — like seven other LIRR retirees indicted in the same case last fall — are accused of fraudulently boosting their annual benefits by falsely claiming to be disabled at the time they filed for early retirement as young as 50 years old.

Each of the newly arrested men received more than $10,000 each a month in combined legitimate LIRR pension payments and fraudulently obtained federal Railroad Retirement Board disability payments, a prosecutor said in Manhattan federal court.

“This case is essentially about a culture of fraud that infected the Long Island Rail Road,” said the prosecutor, Danya Perry, at the arraignment of nine of the men — Brian Delgiorno, Philip Pulsonetti, Frank Plaia, Michael Stavola, Michael Dasaro, Karl Brittel, Kevin Nugent, Gary Super and Thomas Delalla. The 10th accused fraudster, Gregory Bianchini, was busted in Florida.

Some of the men — who face up to 20 years in prison if convicted — racked up thousands of hours in overtime and applied for private disability insurance shortly before filing for early retirement and obtaining public disability benefits, Perry said.

But afterward, Perry said, “Many of them have been observed or surveilled . . . doing strenuous or athletic activities inconsistent with the claims they and their doctors made.”

Two doctors accused of giving these and other retirees bogus diagnoses of disabilities in exchange for cash have already been charged in the wide-ranging scam — which may involve several hundred LIRR pensioners.

The feds also announced they are sending letters to 1,600 LIRR retirees offering them amnesty from prosecution for the scam.

LIRR retirees who admit scamming the system by July 6 will be able to keep all of the money they swindled — but forgo future disability payments, as well as avoid criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits. If they wait until Aug. 10 to admit their involvement, retirees will have to cough up half the swindled money they’ve received.

Sources told The Post that retirees falsely claimed to be disabled to receive an extra $40,000 bump, on average, in pension benefits each year on top of their normal LIRR pension.

Authorities yesterday did not reveal how much they expected to save under the amnesty program, but Bharara justified the offer as proper “given the sheer scale of the alleged fraud” and to “quickly relieve the RRB’s multihundred-million-dollar disability payment obligations.”