WCDefenseCA

What do you reckon, dear readers, is it harder to deliver mail or pizza?  A postal worker was recently sentenced to 90 days in jail, 5 years of probation, 310 hours of community service, and $157,173.12 in restitution after operating a string of pizza franchises.

Tiong C. Ong worked for the U.S. Postal Service as a tractor trailer operator when he sustained an injury to his back.  He then continued to claim he was unable to work and collected benefits, all the while operating a Dominos Pizza franchise, and participated in making pizza, taking orders, and doing deliveries.

After selling his business, he moved to Hawaii where he opened another Dominos, all the while collecting disability checks.

By the time this matter came to a close, he had wrongly received over $157,000.

How was this fraudster nabbed?

“The case came to light in January 2010, when a United States Postal Service human resources employee noticed that every time he visited the defendant’s home, he wasn’t there.”

Your humble blogger would call this diligent… but 17 years later?

In any case, perhaps we can learn something from this: without waiting 17 years, we should make sure that workers claiming to be disabled and unable to work are not self-employed or otherwise employed while cashing checks.

Perhaps in the life pension cases, it makes sense to set up quarterly checks – is the allegedly disabled worker at home during the day? During the evenings? Is there a Facebook page with a treasure-trove of information about recent activities?  Even if you’ve moved past the date to reopen and reduce the award, it’s not too late to seek criminal prosecution and the return of at least some of the money wrongly paid.