A Metropolitan Transportation Authority employee who made almost half a million dollars in 2018 due to his role in what a judge called an "orgy of overtime fraud" was sentenced to eight months in prison, prosecutors said.

Thomas Caputo, 56, was part of a group of current or former MTA employees accused of fraud for submitting false reports of overtime work -- collectively earning more than $1 million in fraudulently-obtained overtime pay, according to federal prosecutors.

In 2018, Caputo was allegedly paid about $461,000 by the MTA. Of that amount, about $344,000 was paid for overtime he was allegedly to work, according to his complaint. In total, this made Caputo the highest paid employee at the MTA during 2018 – higher than the Chairman of the MTA.

Caputo claimed to have worked about 3,864 overtime hours, on top of 1,682 regular hours, according to the complaint filed against him. That alleged amount of overtime would average out to about 10 hours of overtime every single day of the year, including weekends and holidays, on top of his 40-hour work week.   

Caputo, along with Frank Pizzonia, Joseph Ruzzo, 56, John Nugent, 50, and Joseph Balestra, 51 -- four current and former longtime employees of the Long Island Rail Road who reside throughout New York -- and Michael Gundersen, 42 of Manalapan, New Jersey, a longtime employee of the New York City Transit Authority, were charged with one count federal program fraud for submitting time reports falsely claiming to have worked hundreds of hours of overtime that they did not in fact work, prosecutors said in Dec. 2020.

Each faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison if found guilty. Nugent pleaded guilty in July 2021 and was sentenced to five months in prison; Balestra pleaded guilty in September and got a three-month sentence.

In sentencing Nugent, the judge in the case said that the former MTA worker took part in "an orgy of overtime fraud that was carried out on an epic scale."

The workers allegedly volunteered for overtime and then claimed to have been working the times when they were in fact at home or at other non-work locations, including family vacations and (in Caputo's case) bowling alleys.

"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," said U.S Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams. "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."

According to LIRR and NYC Transit complaints, Caputo, Ruzzo, Nugent, Balestra and Gunderson each schemed to fraudulently receive thousands of dollars in compensation from the MTA each by falsely claiming to have worked hundreds of overtime hours (and in the case of Gunderson some regular time hours also) that they did not work. 

The alleged overtime pay they claimed claimed resulted in astonishing salary increases making them among the highest-paid MTA employees, and in the case of Caputo, the highest-paid MTA employee in 2018. 

Similarly, Ruzzo, Nugent, Balestra and Gunderson were paid over $240,000 in overtime each, putting them within the top 12 highest paid employees at the MTA during 2018.  These payments were based on reported amounts of overtime hours ranging from 2,918 to 3,914 for the year.

Caputo was an LIRR employee responsible for track inspection until he retired in 2019.  Ruzzo also retired in 2019, while Nugent and Balestra, who are still employed by LIRR, were all LIRR foremen during the time it is alleged they fraudulently obtained overtime. 

Gunderson was most recently a NYC Transit Maintenance Supervisor Level II, which requires him to, among other things, provide managerial-level oversight and support of Third Rail Contract Compliance and Circuit Breakers.