When surveillance pays off!

From: http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100106/NEWS/100109865

 Area women charged in insurance scams

MONTICELLO - Two women have been arrested in unrelated disability scams.

Tina Dowe, 39, of Fallsburg, and Alexis Muniz, 27, of Accord, were charged with felonies for obtaining or attempting to obtain disability insurance while working elsewhere.

Dowe filed for full disability with the New York State Insurance Fund when in fact she was working as a cook, troopers say. Muniz collected $8,000 in workers compensation benefits from May to December and twice gave false testimony to the Workers Compensation Board in the Village of Monticello stating she hadn’t returned to work, when in fact she was employed and receiving benefits, police say.

Dowe was charged with first-degree offering a false instrument for filing and committing a fraudulent practice. Muniz was charged with perjury, grand larceny and committing a fraudulent practice.

Both have been released pending future court dates.

Victor Whitman

Some good old-fashioned surveillance work was able to reveal what these two claimants were really up to.  Now they are going to have to face the possibility of answering for it.  If there were more prosecutions for WC fraud, there would undoubtedly be a lot less people jumping on the WC bandwagon to get some "vacation time".  Its a combination of good research and surveillance that gets these kinds of results,  and nothing else.  So claim handlers - next time you think you have a fraudulent claimant and you don't know whether its "worth it" to assign some surveillance - here's proof that it definitely can be.