In some states, police officers collecting disability pensions have been re-examined and put back to work when authorities developed evidence that their disability claims were suspicious.

But in New York, even a retired officer's admission in court documents that he's no longer disabled isn't enough to prod the system into taking another look at his case.

That's the situation with former Suffolk Police Officer Albert Iannuzzi, who's collected more than $130,000 in state disability pension payments since 1981. The pension pays him $10,108 a year.

When a Suffolk grand jury indicted Iannuzzi, his wife, daughter, mother, mother-in-law and best friend in a multi-faceted fraud case in 1989, then-Suffolk District Attorney Patrick Henry said: "We're talking about people who would steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes."

Part of the fraud, the grand jury charged, was a falling-out-of-cars epidemic that broke out in Iannuzzi's circle in 1977, winning him both a state disability pension and Social Security disability benefits.

Iannuzzi's friend was Thomas Brazier, a federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent. During a six-month period, Iannuzzi said he fell out of Brazier's car; Brazier said he fell out of a car driven by Iannuzzi's wife, Deborah; and Deborah Iannuzzi said she fell out of a car driven by her husband.

The three falls, prosecutors charged, were a scheme to collect disability and insurance payments. Iannuzzi said he was disabled by head injuries.

In a plea-bargain settlement in 1991, Iannuzzi, then 47, and Brazier got three years' probation after pleading guilty to 10 misdemeanors. Charges against the women were dismissed. As part of the deal, Iannuzzi filed a document in court acknowledging that he was "no longer disabled" and was "able to work." Prosecutors insisted he sign the document because they expected the state and federal governments to cut off his disability benefits.

But state pension officials say they can't cut off his pension, which they send to his retirement address in Florida, because Iannuzzi didn't plead guilty to the specific counts that pertained to his state pension in the 62-count indictment.

The amount and status of Iannuzzi's Social Security benefits couldn't be learned, but Suffolk prosecutors don't believe the Social Security Administration has done anything.

They've been saving surveillance videotapes they made of Iannuzzi and relatives visiting a Long Island Social Security office in 1988 and, law enforcement sources said, telling officials he was too disabled to drive or care for himself. But Social Security has never come to get the tapes, which show Iannuzzi driving away in his Cadillac.