Fraud And Disability Equal A Multibillion Dollar Black Hole For Taxpayers

[GiaGiovanni]

1. Also, from Slate

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/04/25/dumb_criminal_of_the_week_the_alleged_disability_insurance_scammers_whose.html

The circumstances: Disability fraud is not a terribly hard crime to get away with. You claim you’ve been injured, get a shady doctor to sign off, and then you stick to the fakery. If you say you’ve hurt your back, remain recumbent! Don’t go climbing trees or fixing your roof in public. And certainly do not upload to YouTube a video that shows you half-naked and covered in tinfoil, doing “the robot” to the tune of Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride.”

The poor dope who did that was just one of the several alleged insurance fraudsters recently caught in the act by the Utah Attorney General’s Office and inspectors for the Social Security Administration. The department sent hidden camera teams out to film some people who had made claims, to see whether or not the claims were legitimate. Many were not.

One man, who had claimed crippling pain, was filmed driving a truck, carrying a baby seat, and then running away when approached by investigators. (“His truck and t-shirt indicated he had a business for buying antlers,” the AG’s press release noted.) Another woman, who claimed that various mental disorders made it very difficult for her to go out in public, had her benefits cut “after investigators found newspaper articles about her being ‘constantly involved in music projects,’ YouTube videos of her performances, Facebook posts about the venues she was playing and investigators witnessed her perform at a concert for several hundred people.”