Outrageous! Faking It

We all pay the price when "disabled" scam artists collect big benefit bucks.

Slimeball Scammers

Denise Henderson had a sad story to tell. Testifying before a federal judge in Minnesota, the 39-year-old claimed that a car accident had ruined her life, leaving her with severe back and neck pain and constant headaches. Just lifting a gallon of milk was agony, she professed, and she could not sit, stand or drive a car for more than 20 minutes at a time.

Or so she said. It turned out Henderson was living like a queen -- a beauty queen. Just weeks after convincing the judge that she was eligible for $2,200 a month in disability payments, Henderson was crowned Mrs. Minnesota International. She even went on to compete in a pageant that featured a dance routine! Still cashing her disability checks two years later, Henderson became a finalist in the 2001 Mrs. International pageant.

But what Henderson did not know was that investigators had become suspicious of her. Insurance investigators caught her toting heavy shopping bags and even diving during a Hawaiian vacation. She had also made over 200 appearances in one year as a pageant winner -- this from a woman who had once claimed that merely bathing and dressing herself were painful ordeals. Now the queen has been dethroned. She has repaid the more than $190,000 in benefits that she collected over four years and is serving a 46-month prison sentence.

Faking disability is about as low as it gets. As a society, we're committed to helping out people who are physically unable to earn a living, but slimeball scammers happily exploit that compassion.

Not only are they scamming dollars meant for the needy, they're stealing from you and me. Whether it's federal disability dollars funded by taxpayers through Social Security or private insurance paid for with higher premiums, "it comes out of all our pockets," says Frank Scafidi of the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The insurance industry says the cost is in the billions.

But crooks don't care about the cost to society. And because the disability system gives them seemingly endless appeals -- Henderson was initially turned down before she found an accommodating judge -- scam artists keep proving that it's all too easy to dupe judges. "You get so many bites at the apple, odds are that even if you don't have a remotely plausible claim, you're likely to find a sympathetic judge somewhere along the line," says disability law expert James M. Taylor.

It really is amazing to see who manages to scam the system. June Ann Lucena, a former Folsom Prison guard, claimed that a workplace fall left her permanently disabled from injuries to her back, head, neck, shoulder and leg. She won monthly disability benefits of $2,300. But after her benefits kicked in, investigators say they videotaped Lucena doing backflips off a Jet Ski. Maybe she was happy to be making easy money. She was less happy after she was charged with insurance fraud. (Lucena pleaded not guilty and is up for trial.)

Epidemic Abuse

You have to laugh at a clueless Jet Skiing acrobat. But the big picture can make you furious. Among public employees, disability abuse is epidemic, and it's all legal. In Portland, Oregon, the local newspaper called the city's disability system "an open checkbook." By mid-2005, over 10 percent of the city's police and firefighting forces were on disability. And, according to The Oregonian, many of those "disabled" people are healthy enough to earn a living in jobs like homebuilding and private investigation.

Then there was "chief's disease," a suspiciously severe wave of stress and other job-related disabilities that recently plagued the California Highway Patrol. According to The Sacramento Bee, it struck a staggering 55 of 65 high-ranking officers who retired between 2000 and mid-2004. One deputy commissioner who claimed workplace stress and physical ailments retired with a $39,000 settlement, lifetime medical coverage and a $107,000 yearly pension, half of which is tax-free. But while his doctor said the man must "avoid more than ordinary stress in further occupational endeavors," within two years he was working as security director at San Francisco International Airport, a position described in a press release as "on the front lines in the war on terrorism." (The former cop has noted that his new job is "strictly administrative.")

To be sure, there are many people in all professions who legitimately need aid for a real disability. They should get it without hassles. "The public desperately wants to protect people in need," says Larry McCarthy of the California Taxpayers' Association. "But we've got people who are diverting those critical funds and are going off to play golf and have second careers."

The final insult is how hard it can be to undo dubious disability benefits. Take the case of a former Washington state police officer who is currently serving a life sentence for murder. Guess why he's still getting $3,100 monthly checks from the government? Yup -- he's "disabled," allegedly from depression and stress. Yet murdering another human being is apparently not enough of a reason to cut him off. Over the last ten years, a government program has uncovered hundreds of disability recipients wanted for felonies -- 88 of them were facing homicide charges.

Maybe if the government tried a little harder, we might just catch more scammers. Taylor suggests limiting the repeated appeals people can make for Social Security disability benefits. And at the state and local level, politicians need to stop bowing before public-employee unions and impose tougher scrutiny on rackets like "chief's disease." If you are able to earn a living, then that income should at least be deducted from your disability stipend.

Of course, there will always be greedy people without a lick of shame -- fraudsters like Laura Lee Medley, who reportedly claimed to be wheelchair-bound. But after her recent arrest in Las Vegas on charges of insurance fraud, a miracle happened: Medley allegedly took off running! Apparently nothing heals like the prospect of a jail sentence. It's about time we gave more of these crooks that same medicine.