Happy Wednesday dear readers!

Your humble blogger hopes the past weekend, longer than usual, was a time of rest and reflection for you all.  But, as we find ourselves back in the thick of it, with the temperatures rising and the children brimming with excitement for the summer months to release them from school and dropped into the freedom of leisure activities, how about a blog post?

I bring you the story of another “successful” fraud prosecution, this one of Yeimi Espinoza, as reported by WorkCompCentral.  Ms. Espinoza plead guilty to one count of “concealing or failing to disclose an event in order to receive benefits.”  To wit, she testified at deposition that she had no other employment even though surveillance conducted on the day of her deposition showed he working in a field before driving to her deposition.

She was ordered to pay $11,238 in restitution and was placed on probation for one year.

The trigger for the investigation? According to Intercare and WorkCompCentral, convict Espinoza was “reportedly observed working in a blueberry field.”  That’s a lucky catch and not a systemic response.

While this certainly may have helped offset some of the wrongfully imposed costs on her employer’s insurer and likely damaged her credibility as to her claim, your humble blogger must sadly reflect that this result seems a limited deterrence effect to the workers’ compensation population at large.  When one is caught with one’s hand in the cookie jar, simply releasing the cookie and going on as if nothing happened is unlikely to dissuade the next cookie bandit.

Your humble blogger hopes that in the future, we can see the California legislature take a break from its crusade to drive out any remaining business in California to help protect the population at large from fraud.  As we all know, workers’ compensation fraud has a seemingly endless list of victims.  Insurers and employers are cheated of resources.  Employees with legitimate claims are seem more skeptically because of the prevalence of fraud.  Prices on consumers go up to cover the cost of absorbing, investigating, litigating, and punishing fraud.

Your humble blogger tips his proverbial hat to Intercare for investigating and referring this case and to the District Attorney for taking the case up and prosecuting it.  Another reminder to our never-ending duty of vigilance.

Straight on to Friday, dear readers!