Many of the 72 city police officers and eight firefighters named in the 205-count indictment had blamed the Sept. 11 attacks for what they described as mental problems: post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and severe depression.

“It’s a particularly cynical part of the charged scheme that approximately half the defendants falsely claimed that their psychiatric disabilities were caused by the 9/11 attacks,” Mr. Vance said at a news conference.

Yet investigators said the accused were living full lives and in many cases were holding jobs in private security, construction and landscaping.

Several of the defendants documented their activities on Facebook. The bail letter includes photographs culled from the Internet that show one former officer riding a water scooter and others working at jobs including helicopter pilot and martial arts instructor. One is shown fishing off the coast of Costa Rica and another sitting astride a motorcycle, while another appeared in a television news story selling cannoli at the Feast of San Gennaro in Manhattan.

Prosecutors said Joseph Esposito, 64, who retired from the Police Department in 1990, coached the applicants to act symptomatic during exams conducted by psychiatrists for the Social Security Administration.

In one secretly recorded telephone conversation, Mr. Esposito told an applicant to misspell words and miscalculate simple arithmetic, and to say that she kept the television on at home “just to hear a voice in the house,” but to emphasize that she kept changing channels because she could not focus.

“When you’re talking to the guy, don’t look directly at him,” Mr. Esposito said, according to a transcript of the conversation in the bail letter. “You know, pause for a second. You’re just trying to show that, you know, you’re depressed. You, you can’t, you, you don’t have any desire for anything, and if you can, you pretend you have panic attacks.”