New Castle Town Board Refuses to Deal With Police Pension Fraud

by Maureen Keating Tsuchiya

The New Castle Town Board has conducted its own evaluation of the allegations of Pension Fraud contained in the lawsuit Attorney General Elliot Spitzer filed in Supreme Court on July 27, 2006, against New Castle Police Lt. John Vize and his former colleague, Dennis Mahoney.

New Castle Town Board Refuses to Deal With Police Pension Fraud Incredibly, they have expressed their intention not to take any disciplinary action against either Lt. John Vize, Chief Robert Breen or Town Administrator Gennaro Faiella. The Board, while not issuing a public report, nevertheless, concluded that the charges are baseless, “old allegations.”

Faiella confirmed that no public reports or demands for any resignations have been made by the town’s supervisor or any member of the New Castle Town Board.

Furthermore, the Town is continuing to provide retirement health benefits to former officer Dennis Mahoney even though Spitzer’s suit, on behalf of the People of the State of New York, states on page 7, section 25, “Having completed only nineteen years of service Mahoney actually is not eligible to receive full retirement benefits until March 1, 2007, the month following his fifty-fifth birthday. All the pension benefits Mahoney has received from the State to date thus have obtained unlawfully.”

The eleven-page complaint was filed by Spitzer’s Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Unit following an investigation by the Office of State Comptroller Alan Hevesi (OSC) which manages and is the trustee of public employee pension funds. In the suit the defendants, Dennis Mahoney, a retired police officer and, John Vize, a New Castle Police Department lieutenant who is currently responsible for staff services and special events, were charged with misrepresenting that the retired officer Mahoney worked as a police officer for a full 20 years when, in fact, he worked only nineteen years by falsifying records to defraud the Pension System under section 63-c of the New York Executive or “Tweed” Law.


The Town of New Castle does not appear to be interested in recovering any money on its behalf even as the State of New York seeks to recover pension benefits paid by the State to Mahoney since August 2000 for a total of $181,629 or $2751.95 per month when it should have paid him nothing; and, salary and benefits paid to Lt. Vize by the Town of New Castle during the period of his breach of duty August 1999 to July 2000, in the amount of approximately $100,000.

Spitzer’s lawsuit also stated “In violation of his fiduciary duty, Vize failed to disclose Mahoney’s fraud to the Department or the Town. Instead, Vize actively participated in Mahoney’s fraud.” Vize, of Mohegan Lake, “was serving as the Department’s records officer and was responsible for, among other things, scheduling and recording police officers’ shifts, and maintaining the Department’s payroll records for the Town. With Lt. Vize’s knowledge, cooperation and approval, other police officers worked many of the shifts that had been assigned to Mahoney.”

Officers who worked these shifts, were referred to by some of the department’s members as “Mahoney days,” were paid in cash. Approximately 25% of the Department’s 40 officers have been reported to have participated in the scheme.

Supporters of Mahoney have stated that Mahoney was medically incapacitated due to gout or Lyme disease and had to ask others officers to do ‘switches’ and work some of his shifts.

Pages 6 through 7, Sections 20-24 of Spitzer’s suit addresses those charges as follows:
“During his no-show period, Mahoney falsely claimed to be working. For example, he applied to the OSC to retire early based on purported on-the –job injuries (he claimed that a fall in the Department’s lunchroom had given him arthritis and that a tick bite during firearms training had given him Lyme Disease). In the course of those applications’ reviews, Mahoney told the doctor who examined him in or about January 2000 that he had been working ‘light duty’ for the Department. This statement was false. While Mahoney may been performing light duty work prior to August 1999, from in or about August 1999 to in or about July 2000, he did not perform any work for the Department. Mahoney’s applications for early retirement were denied.

In or about January 2000, Mahoney again applied to the OSC to retire. In a letter dated February 11, 2000, the OSC informed Mahoney that he was not yet eligible for the increased retirement benefits provided by section 384-d because he had completed only 19.60 years of creditable service. In that same letter, the OSC advised Mahoney that he could pay $9,804 for .40 years of Veteran’s service so as to render him eligible to retire with bene ts as if he had completed twenty years of service, Rather than make this payment, Mahoney withdrew his application for retirement and purportedly continued to work for the Department.

Mahoney reapplied to the OSC to retire in or about July 2000, falsely representing that he had completed twenty years of service with the Department. As was Vize’s regular practice when a police officer applied to retire, Vize printed out a spreadsheet reflecting Mahoney’s work record and forwarded it to the Town. Vize has admitted that he knows that the State calculates a police officer’s pension benefits based on the work records that Vize submits on behalf of the Department to the Town after a police officer retires. On or about July 31, 200, Mahoney officially retired from the Department.”

Certified copies of THE STATE OF NEW YORK, by ELIOT SPITZER, ATTORNEY GENERAL vs.
DENNIS MAHONEY and JOHN VIZE, Index N. 06-13794, are available from the office of Westchester
County Clerk Tim Idoni, on the third floor of the Westchester County Courthouse located at 110 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Blvd. in White Plains, New York, Phone: (914) 995-3080 Fax: (914) 995-4030.

http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2006/jul/jul27a_06.html is the link to the July 27, 2006 Press Release announcing Spitzer’s suit entitled “Two Westchester Town Police Officers Sued For Cheating Pension
Fund—Police Supervisor Creates False Employment Records”.


Editor’s Note - The Westchester Guardian goes on record to state that we firrly believe the overwhelming
majority of police officers in all 42 Departments throughout Westchester County are dedicated, hard-working, fundamentally honest public servants.

It is for that reason, above all others, that we work to expose and help weed out those who, by their unlawful
activity, would destroy the reputation and the integrity of their departments.

In the interest of balanced presentation, we have reprinted the following letter received by reporter Maureen Keating Tsuchiya from an anonymous source claiming to be an active New Castle police officer. Readers may draw their own conclusions.