3rd Staten Island Cop Charged in Claimed Scheme to Justify Overtime by Writing Phantom Tickets
A Staten Island, N.Y., police officer has been criminally charged for allegedly writing 36 phantom tickets between March and June in an effort to justify substantial overtime hours on the job.
Officer Paul Pizzuto, 40, a 17-year veteran of the department, is accused of submitting paperwork for the tickets—some of which were issued to deceased drivers—only to the local police precinct, reports the New York Post. Ordinarily, both the state motor vehicles department and city finance department would also be copied on tickets.
Pizzuto allegedly ran license plate numbers to come up with driver information for some of the tickets.
Earlier this year, two other Staten Island officers also were charged in a similar claimed scheme. Officers Stephen Gerwer, 39, and Vincent Adinolfi, 40, allegedly simply threw away the other portions of the tickets, notifying only their own department in an effort to appear productive, another Post article reports.
Superiors became suspicious when the officers, allegedly knowing that the tickets would not be contested by motorists who never received them, did not appear at scheduled court sessions.
