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VIDEO MAGIC
The woman said she was incapacitated by her injury. She said she couldn’t even use a broom to sweep her floors.
Then the nice man came to her door. He was a friend of a friend. She invited him in.
As he entered the room, he accidentally dropped the ashes from his cigarette on the floor. He offered to clean it up for her. He asked for the broom.
She wouldn’t hear of it. There was no need for him to clean up the mess. She brought her broom and bent over to clean up the mess.
She soon heard from the insurance company, calling to negotiate a much smaller settlement than she had in mind.
VIDEO MAGIC II
A man on disability for a work-related injury was reported to be repairing cars for his friends while he collected his payments. He worked in his garage though and it was hard to get any evidence.
One day, the man was working when a car broke down in front of his house. Being a nice guy, he went out to see if he could help. He didn’t realize that he was caught on video as he bent over the engine to take a look.
He returned to work in short order.
VIDEO MAGIC III
And the magic team of Bob Archuleta and San Joaquin Deputy DA Stephen Taylor got this one:
In his deposition, the man said that if he tried to lift his hand over his head, “he’d probably be dead.” He also attested to being unable to steer his car or close the car door with his left hand.
Hah! Not only was the poor, poor workers’ compensation claimant filmed working on his vehicles, he was pictured closing the car door, steering the car and lifting the hood above his head—all with his left hand. The evidence was damning enough to send the claimant to jail: without passing GO and without collecting $200.
VIDEO MAGIC IV
The claimant said that if he lifted more than 20 to 30 pounds, his back hurt. He couldn’t perform his job duties—so, of course, he filed a workers’ compensation claim.
Enter Robert Williams, an investigator employed by Proulx Professional Research in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Williams took his video recorder over to the local YMCA and shot two hours of film showing the claimant involved in a strenuous weight-lifting routine.
The same guy who couldn’t lift over 30 pounds at work was able to lift 295 pounds five times, repeat the exercise twice, and then bench-press decreasing amounts, stopping at 225 pounds. Oh, and then he did some arm exercises with 95-pound weights.
Needless to say, the claimant has been charged with filing a false workers’ compensation claim. This oughta be interesting!
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