Firefighter Caught Faking Disability While Working as Strip Club Bouncer

Описание: On January 23, 2019, Scott Maraio — a 53-year-old former NYPD officer turned FDNY firefighter who had been on disability since January 2002 — was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison after pleading guilty to theft of government property and making false statements to the Social Security Administration. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York established that Maraio had falsely claimed disabling neck and back injuries that prevented him from working, while simultaneously earning undisclosed income across two separate jobs spanning nearly a decade: from September 2008 through August 2014, he worked as a security guard at a Staten Island strip club, and from July 2012 through at least 2018, he worked fire-safety roles on active construction sites, including as a fire safety manager and fireguard, through a private staffing company. The smoking gun was his own employment records and pay stubs, which directly contradicted every disability certification he had submitted to the federal government. Maraio was one of three former law-enforcement defendants charged together in a coordinated scheme prosecutors said had diverted over one million dollars in fraudulent disability benefits — money taken from a safety net designed for people genuinely unable to work.