A former NYPD lieutenant who was fired after pleading guilty at departmental trial to receiving $100,000 for hours he did not work — mostly in fraudulent overtime — will not go to prison as long as he is not rearrested, a Manhattan judge said this week.
Prosecutors said Thomas Fabrizi was sentenced Tuesday to a conditional discharge in his grand larceny case. His sentencing and previously unreported firing come amid continued scrutiny over the NYPD’s high overtime costs and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch’s moves to address corruption within the department's ranks.
Fabrizi declined to comment Thursday when reached by phone, and his lawyer did not respond to an inquiry about the case. He pleaded guilty to the felony charge in court early last month, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
An NYPD spokesperson confirmed Fabrizi was terminated in July. An internal report detailing departmental proceedings related to his misconduct shows Tisch approved his dismissal that month.
“Based on the totality of the evidence in this record, respondent's actions were contrary to good order, efficiency and discipline in this department,” an assistant deputy commissioner for NYPD trials wrote in the report, recommending Fabrizi’s termination. “His submission of false entries in police records and the City Time database facilitated the acquisition of $100,289.90 in ill-gotten gains.”
Fabrizi was a 19-year veteran of the department when he was arrested in January on charges of stealing more than $64,000 through work-related fraud over several months. The report for his departmental trial states he logged almost 1,000 hours — amounting to just over $100,000 in overtime and normal pay — when he wasn’t actually on the job.
Fabrizi testified he was under significant financial stress because one of his children has special needs and because he had to repay graduate school loans, provide monetary assistance to his in-laws and deal with the effects of a previous marriage he’d entered to help a friend who had serious medical issues, according to the document. The assistant deputy commissioner wrote that while the disciplinary tribunal sympathized with those challenges, Fabrizi's misconduct demonstrated “a lack of integrity … inconsistent with continued service” in the NYPD.
Fabrizi, a Rockland County resident, supervised four sergeants and 16 detectives at the major case unit in Manhattan, the document states. From July 2023 to February 2024, he falsified his overtime reports and other internal paperwork, and improperly used an NYPD vehicle to drive his children between Rockland County and their school in Queens, filling it with gasoline on the department’s dime.
During some of the hours he claimed he was working overtime, Fabrizi was working a paid security detail for a private security company without NYPD authorization. On other occasions he logged as work time, he was shopping, running personal errands and spending time with his family, according to police records.
Fabrizi was stripped of his gun and badge in March 2024 and transferred to a desk job at the Manhattan courts while internal investigators reviewed his overtime pay, the New York Daily News previously reported. He formerly worked in the NYPD’s 17th Precinct in Midtown and narcotics division in Manhattan North, agency records show.
The NYPD Lieutenants Benevolent Association union did not return requests for comment on Fabrizi’s sentencing and firing.
