Basketball Coach Returns $11K In Worker's Comp To MTA

PEEKSKILL, NY — A high-school basketball coach has been sentenced in a worker's compensation fraud case. Tyrone Searight, who had been an MTA bus driver, had claimed a work injury. Then investigators found him coaching varsity girls basketball at Haldane High School.

Searight was employed as a bus driver for the MTA Bus Company when he reported a work injury to his left knee on Nov. 7, 2016. After filing paperwork certifying he was unable to work due to the injury, he collected workers’ compensation wage indemnity benefits from December 2016 to May 2017. The total topped $11,000.

The New York Inspector General's Office found that while Searight was claiming he was not working and unable to work, he was the girls’ varsity basketball coach for the Haldane Central School District in Cold Spring.

Between November 2016 and March 2017, Searight was observed coaching the team at games and running practices. Video surveillance showed Searight bending, squatting, pacing, waving his arms and abruptly standing up from the sidelines at several games.

Searight was arrested and fired from the MTA.

"While this individual claimed he was injured to the extent that he was unable to work, he was working on the basketball court – an affront against the workers’ compensation system,” said Inspector General Letizia Tagliafierro in a press release. “My office will continue to fight waste, fraud and abuse in order to protect the state’s taxpayers.”

In court Nov. 26, Searight, 50, received a one year conditional discharge. He has paid back the MTA, according to News12.

The Peekskill resident had originally been charged with two counts of worker's comp fraud and one count of grand larceny.