Another Rikers Officer Pleads Guilty, and the Pattern Is the Story A second
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A second correction officer admitted to false workers’ compensation claims tied to use-of-force incidents at Rikers Island. New Yorkers should be furious.
By Michele Evans New York City, New York 6/1/2026
Category: Courts / Criminal Justice / Rikers Island
New York City, New York - Another Rikers Island correction officer has pleaded guilty in federal court, and once again, the facts point to a problem bigger than one employee.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Jovanny Concepcion, a former New York City Department of Correction officer assigned to Rikers Island, pleaded guilty to making false statements related to health care matters. Prosecutors said Concepcion falsely claimed he was injured while on duty during incidents involving incarcerated people and the use of force.
The amount is not small. Federal prosecutors said Concepcion received at least $232,427.97 in workers’ compensation benefits he was not entitled to.
That is taxpayer money. New York City money. Public money.
And the alleged setting for the lies makes it even worse: incidents where force was used against incarcerated people.
That is the part that should stop every New Yorker cold.
Workers’ compensation exists for a reason. Dangerous jobs produce real injuries. Correction officers can be injured. Public employees who are actually hurt on the job should receive care, protection, and benefits without being dragged through unnecessary suspicion.
But when a correction officer falsely claims injury after use-of-force incidents inside Rikers, the fraud does more than steal money. It corrodes the public record. It uses violence, or alleged violence, as paperwork. It turns incarcerated people into props in a benefits scheme. It takes moments that should trigger scrutiny, documentation, accountability, and review, and converts them into a personal payout machine.
That is not just fraud. It is a betrayal of public trust at the exact pressure point where Rikers has already failed too many people.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Concepcion’s case follows another guilty plea by former Rikers correction officer Todd Faustin, who admitted to making false statements in connection with workers’ compensation benefits after use-of-force incidents. Prosecutors said Faustin received at least $370,336.79 in benefits he was not entitled to.
Put those two figures together, and New Yorkers are looking at more than $600,000 in improper benefits tied to Rikers officers and use-of-force incidents.
That number should make City Hall uncomfortable. It should make DOC leadership uncomfortable. It should make every oversight body ask a harder question:
How many times has a use-of-force incident inside Rikers generated paperwork that benefited the officer while burying the humanity of the incarcerated person on the other end of that force?
Because this is not happening in a vacuum.
Rikers Island is already one of the most scrutinized jail systems in the country. It has been the subject of years of federal oversight, public outrage, violent incidents, deaths, staff misconduct, staffing failures, and calls for closure. People held there are overwhelmingly pretrial detainees, meaning many have not been convicted of the charges against them. They are legally presumed innocent, yet they are placed inside a jail system where violence, neglect, and institutional dysfunction have become part of the public record.
Against that backdrop, a correction officer falsely claiming injury after force is used is not a paperwork problem. It is a public-integrity problem.
It raises questions about how use-of-force incidents are documented. It raises questions about whether medical and workers’ compensation systems are catching fraud quickly enough. It raises questions about whether DOC supervisors, investigators, and city agencies are reviewing patterns instead of treating each claim like an isolated file.
And it raises a brutal question about incentives.
If an officer can use a force incident as the foundation for a false injury claim, what does that do to the culture inside the jail?
The public deserves to know whether these cases were outliers or symptoms. The public deserves to know how many similar claims were filed, how many were approved, how many were later questioned, and how many involved the same officers, the same units, the same facilities, or the same kinds of incidents.
The city cannot keep asking New Yorkers to pour money into Rikers while treating corruption as a series of disconnected scandals.
Contraband cases. Bribery cases. Excessive force allegations. Staff absenteeism. Deaths in custody. Medical neglect. Federal intervention. And now repeated guilty pleas involving false workers’ compensation claims connected to use-of-force incidents.
At some point, the pattern becomes the story.
This case also exposes the insult at the heart of the system. People inside Rikers often struggle to be believed when they report abuse, injury, fear, or neglect. Families fight for answers. Survivors fight to have their records taken seriously. Advocates fight to prove what has already been said again and again: Rikers is dangerous.
Yet here, according to federal prosecutors, correction officers were able to use alleged injuries from force incidents to pull hundreds of thousands of dollars from the public treasury.
People in custody have to fight to be seen as human.
Officers who lied got paid.
That is the collision.
Concepcion is scheduled to be sentenced on September 10, 2026. The charge carries a maximum potential sentence of five years in prison, though the final sentence will be determined by a judge.
But sentencing one officer will not answer the larger question.
New York needs a full public accounting of workers’ compensation claims tied to Rikers use-of-force incidents. It needs independent review of patterns. It needs transparency about how these claims were approved. It needs to know whether supervisors flagged anything, whether medical reviews caught inconsistencies, and whether any incarcerated people connected to these incidents filed complaints, grievances, or injury reports of their own.
Because Rikers does not need another quiet scandal.
It needs daylight.
When public employees steal from taxpayers, New Yorkers deserve accountability. When that alleged theft is tied to force used against incarcerated people, New Yorkers deserve more than a guilty plea. They deserve answers about the system that allowed it to happen.
And they deserve them now.
*Michele Evansis an independent journalist, author, and former ESPN technical producer whose work has appeared in The New York Times.
Michele got her start in 2001 covering the NBA and NFL.
She now covers New York City courts, criminal-justice procedure, NYPD, FDNY, domestic-violence systems, media accountability, public safety, advocacy efforts, and New York civic life through courthouse observation, public records, legal analysis, and lived-experience reporting.
