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.)

• Michael Crowley
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