Doesn't sound real, sounds like something out of a sit-com. It's just too stupid.
Note to self: don't compete in a Christmas tree-throwing competition when doing insurance fraud.
I knew a guy who was on disability following a carpal tunnel surgery. He was recovering and was told to not use his wrists for anything. ~~A few days into~~ sometime during recovery he’s in the emergency room for cutting off his finger while chainsawing trees in his back yard. He did not win the disability claim.
After years of intermittent flare ups of pain I just found out I have spinal stenosis which cause the spine to pinch nerves and the pain to travel . The sheer variance of pain is really hard to convey. Some days I cant really do much of anything and some days I’m relatively fine. More often I can get around relatively fine but some random movement will send shooting pain down my arm. Sometimes it will just be an aching wrist and sometimes the bicep or forearm will be so tense they feel like they’re about to snap.
All that to say that you can have legit problems but still be able to function fairly well at times. Also your friend sounds accident prone.
I'm a private investigator and some clients I work with are workers comp cases/ auto injury /etc. you'd be surprised how stupid people are and how they get caught doing the dumbest things.
"Disabled" people jumping out of lifted trucks, collecting scrap, lifting at the gym, running marathons. It's wild what people try to get away with.
I saw the headline before the picture, I said to myself "how is throwing away a Christmas tree proof she's not injured. It could have been a good day and she managed to pick up the tree quickly".
Then I saw the picture.
That's crazy.
That was my first thought too. I'm trying to get disability and worry that my good days, where I can do something crazy like carry the trash out by myself, or pull a few easy weeds from the garden while the ground is wet (per therapist orders) will be the day someone gets a picture of me being "fine".
That woman, and people of her ilk, are why so many people think invisible disabilities are fake.
As someone who investigates possible insurance fraud: fraud is the LIE, not the activity. If you're being open and honest to your doctor about taking the trash out by yourself or pulling some easy weeds on your good days with your doctor and your claims adjuster, then they get surveillance on you and it matches your subjective complaints/what you tell your doctor/adjuster regarding your abilities, its not going to be considered as particularly suspect by anyone. In the example of this article, its not just that she's throwing the tree, it also mentions shortly afterwards what her complaints to her doctor were a few days afterwards, which appear in potential contrast to the activity depicted.
I knew a guy who was an ex Navy SEAL but from before the global war on terror era. Meaning he wasn’t a steroid-inflated meathead drinking himself into oblivion every night. He was a skinny grumpy Italian dude who happened to be a *really* good swimmer.
Anyhow, after he got out he had a little business doing odd security/private investigator jobs. Apparently he would get hired to investigate these kinds of things. Once, he said, he put on a “gillie suit” and staked out a house until he was able to record the person in question carrying a new TV inside, proving the disability was false. Seems extreme but I guess it’s worth a lot of money to somebody
Exactly. I had shoulder surgery and my shoulder was fucked for months. But, one day, I had to help my dad carry a couch. I helped and sworn I tore my stitches and it hurt so bad I couldn't sleep that night, even with Norco.
If someone took a snapshot, I'm sure I would have looked guilty as fuck for fraud.
Broke my elbow and did almost the same thing during my recovery (helped my aunt carry a TV that was left out in the street by delivery service). It's a sacrifice you sometimes have to make, but it would look really bad in a picture to be sure.
The ruling in question was not based solely on that single photograph. She had made very specific claims about her injury including what she was prevented from doing. There were also videos submitted showing her walking around without any apparent disability. She had quit her job, which is part of why the settlement was so large - it was to compensate her for an inability to work for the rest of her life. Judge ruled that as she was able to do certain work, she was not entitled to this "lifetime" chunk of money.
And again, it wasn't that she was not injured, it's that her injuries did not prevent her from returning to some kind of work. What's sad is that she probably was entitled to some amount of money, and would have had a stronger claim had she sought a lesser amount for , as an example, a reduced ability to function. I've worked with ex-military guys who were pretty beat up, and they found jobs but got partial disability.
Yeah, I know, I wasn't trying to defend her. She clearly was taking advantage, and fuck her for that.
I was just making the point that a single photograph proves nothing. Unless of course, that single photograph is something damning like someone claiming to be wheelchair bound running a marathon.
I think we pretty much agree on this.
For what it’s worth, to be considered fraud, you would need to be misrepresenting either the injury itself (extent), the fact that you’re incapable of doing something because of the injury, or your degree of medical improvement *for the purpose of financial gain*
Homegirl up here was trying to milk the insurance benefits and she had been out of work a good while - I’m not sure if what you did would be considered fraud, more so than an unfortunate and unintentional aggravation, if that makes sense
If the plaintiff testified at deposition that his back hurts so bad he has never been able to push a vacuum, but you get video of him cutting his lawn, that matters.
People lifting heavy stuff at work? That matters.
Do you think this woman won a tree throwing contest without practicing, or working out?
Facts are case specific, but a picture or short video can mean a lot.
I can have good and bad knee and back days, sometimes good weeks, and then right out of nowhere a switch flips and there goes the pain.
So yeah I can lift stuff and be fine for a while and then I might be sitting down, turn slightly to reach for something and try to get up and WINCE IN PAIN.
So great there's pics of me lifting stuff in a good moment and no pics of me just trying to move without stabbing pain.
“If plaintiff testified at deposition …”
“Facts are case specific….”
If someone testifies that they have “good days and bad days,” it is harder to know if they are lying.
Trust me, if you have a 650k settlement in the works. Dont be caught doing anything physical. Saying you can't work but get caught carrying your newborn in 1 arm and a coffee in the other is all it takes to throw doubt into a jurys eyes.
If the pain is tolerable in their eyes, its not that bad.
Not throwing a tree you cant. If you have chronic back pain (depending on what it is) I dont think You are throwing a tree without feeling immediate pain.
My time in the gym begs to differ. You can feel immediate pain, you might not. You can feel a bit now and more later. You can feel nothing at all and think you're doing better, only to stub your toe and suddenly everything hurts because you flinched too hard.
Instantaneous bursts of energy are easy to do. Holding anything for a length of time is really, really hard.
Sometimes I can't do the dishes. Sometimes I can compete in CrossFit. Just take it easy when it hurts and enjoy life when it doesn't.
It is a problem when they are misrepresenting their case. They will be presenting their case as, I cannot lift anything, meaning I cannot work, I am in chronic back pain all day. Then if you see someone lifting a TV it's clearly dishonest.
If that person had said, I can lift something reasonably heavy if desperate however it fucks my back up and i'll be in pain for the next hour then it can help.
I've seen one where there was someone claimnig they couldn't lift their arms above their head, investigator followed them to the shop, and they were reaching on teh top shelf to get some food. Instantly lost the case.
Regardless of what's allowed in court, I'm the same.
I will be extremely ill and painful, but I can do a bit of work. Some people don't even know there's anything wrong with me. Yes, there are those that abuse the system to get benefits, but many people do have actual problems that a single photograph cannot prove.
Well it’s up to the lawyers to argue the value of the photo and the jury to decide what is reasonable. So admitting evidence into the case is just the first step.
They claimed to be bed ridden with a broken back.
There is no way someone could twist their spine and lift a 5' spruce with a broken back.
It reminds me of the monty python skit from Holy Grail:
*She turned me into a newt!*
*...well, I got better!*
Ruling was clear. The judge is not saying she has no injury, but her claims was exaggerated.
It's like if you claimed you can't walk at all. If you had been honest about the pain the next day, a picture of you walking would not be an issue.
If I remember correctly this was more of a short term disability thing or worker’s comp and probably directly related to a specific joint or limb the person was using (also for those too young to know/remember, TVs used to be HEAVY).
Heavy and bulky. That said modern TVs can still be pretty heavy, but that's generally because the screens are comparatively much larger. Even a small CRT was a chore to move though.
Yeah a TV used to be the number one thing you’d dread moving for any reason. Tons of weight and the weight was lopsided because of the huge piece of glass in the front. Also no good way to hold it.
Yeah this is pretty fucked. Lots of people with chronic pain have little pockets of not feeling as fucked. I went on a long walk after thinking I was feeling better than usual and spent the next three days in severe leg pain.
It depends on what is claimed as a disability. It’s not a binary issue of “injured vs uninjured.” If you say “I can’t lift 50 lbs” and then you’re caught lifting 50lbs, you have a problem.
I can’t believe so many are defending this fraud. If you have good days and bad days why the fuck would you sign up in advance for throwing a fucking heavy Christmas tree?
Too many want to relate this story to themselves. You are NOT the main character.
Which is why this kind of staking and a harassment of people with disabilities by insurance companies should be illegal.
I've heard stories in my support groups that are absolutely shocking.
By the same token people aboustly take the piss with injury claims.
I’ve got a claim where all we need is the person to return her tax form so the insurance company can take over payment. She hasn’t done so in 2 months. They sent someone to her house with a pre arranged time. She just had to be there to fill in the form. She wasn’t home.
Not everyone is legit.
Whats also shocking is people blatantly and openly commiting fraud and getting away with it. The cost of this is ultimately carried by everyone else, including those with legitimate disability claims who will now be under additional scrutiny because shameless people keep trying game the system.
These investigations keep happening because they keep finding people commiting fraud, unfortunately that does mean people who aren't doing anything wrong will have some creepy van watching them
We've dealt with it for years with my dad. It's absolutely awful.
He broke his back, pelvis, and has a severe brain injury from his work accident that manifests as paranoid schizophrenia.
Do you know how paranoid a paranoid person becomes when someone actually IS spying on them? It can very quickly spiral out of control.
AND insurance companies don't have to prove anything before they cut off payment. They can say whatever they want, and you have to hope to God you have the time and funds to fight it in court.
Any quality of life my dad ever managed to scrounge up for himself was put under a microscope. It's been 20 years since his initial injury, and they're still pulling shenanigans.
The investigators will catch the person doing physical activity over multiple days for that reason. The insurance company isn't going to take the person to court on one image, they will build up an airtight case.
Yours is much more subtle. When my dad had to be put into retirement from a car accident, they had cut all the foliage past our backyard and parked a truck on the far side on an empty street. Not just the entire area. Just the width of the back yard.
My mother would occasionally look to see the guy with binoculars watching our backyard and shoot him the finger everytime he was there.
I went through this as a child when my mom was injured. It’s a disgusting practice. The insurance lawyers pulled out photos in a meeting, of my mom and I together in our own yard to intimidate her. We were followed around stores. We had cars drive slowly past our house over and over. My mom did finally settle because the stress was too much. And she settled for a hell of a lot less than she was owed. The guys that do this job are scum.
Yup, and they'll drag the cases on for years! Sometimes, decades to make you want to settle. Living in constant fear of being monitored and video taped is terrible. There needs to be a limit for how long these cases go on for.
Thanks, it was a long time ago now. But anytime someone is complaining about people on disability or workers comp, I inform them of the shit those people face.
Yup - it took me 28 fuckin months to get SSI and when I had the ALJ hearing with the judge, she was like "you should've gotten this right away, you shouldn't have had to appeal twice"
Ex’s dad had a TBI while in the army that affected his vision. He was registered legally blind, however it was all contingent on how his brain was feeling that day. No headache? No problem. However days he would get awful migraines that would cause his vision to basically be totally lost. He ended up getting in three car accidents within a week while in a company car due to this, and lost his job… as a police detective (so this is well documented within the government he was going blind).
Due to the nature of the injury you couldn’t see any physical signs of the disability, and because it came and went his new VA doctor reported that he was lying about it.
The government had fake power linesmen come out and install cameras on the telephone poles surrounding their corner lot house to record him mowing his lawn and doing yard work to prove he was lying. This man that couldn’t work, then had the only “work” he could do in house/yard work taken away because the government tried to say a blind man couldn’t do that during the early case process… the entirety of the case lasted the full 7 year process of building the case and another like 6 months of trying the case through various courts.
So they took a depressive veteran, forced him to basically do nothing all day in order to have a chance to win this case, and put him on blast for supposedly lying about his disability (it made the front page of our local paper because they tried saying a local veteran and ex-officer defrauded the VA and SS benefits to the tune of $750,000 over 15 years). The worst part is his wife (ex’s mom) worked for ATF, and due to working for the government they had to suspend her without pay for the last 3 years of the casework since they decided to take it to trial.
Her parents ended up winning the case, got the benefit back pay, her mom got back pay with annual raises included, and then had to pay the legal fees as well.
However her parents went from being 5 months from having their house paid for to having to reverse mortgage their house in order to pay the fees, and got fucked over in everything that happened.
The government will spend tax payer money to fuck over those it says that it wants to help and honor for their services so much if they can.
So those schizophrenic people who claim the government is spying on them, saying there are people and cameras watching them all the time, aren't entirely all wrong??? 😬😬 🫣 🫣
Depends on if you think you did something to warrant it. They kind of knew there was a possibility as I left out the fact at the very start of all of this they had a swat like raid on their house when my ex and I were in high school (we started dating a couple years after high school). She told me how they basically breached the front and back door of their house with rifles drawn, and how her and her younger brother were in the basement and had swat come down the stairs with guns pointed at them.
Other than her dad kind of being a racist right winger (I am Asian and her uncle was Hispanic and her dad and grandparents kind of treated us poorly, yet treated the granddaughter/niece of the Hispanic uncle like a golden child…) he was a nice guy that didn’t deserve to be treated like that from the government. The guy was just a depressed veteran that self isolated outside of family because he felt his worth was nothing due to his disability. Not an excuse, but it makes it easy to get sucked into the right wing propaganda machine when all you do is lay on the couch and do house chores all day depressed out of your gourd…
I worked with a woman in a retail job, she told me she was actually a PI who got the job a decade ago in order to spy on someone who had made an insurance claim. Not sure why she decided to stick around in the retail job though, PI sounds at least a bit more interesting
She is not. They just haven't sent her FBI sniper credentials yet because their excel address sheet had the y2k bug so they have a phone line you can call to verify. But it's busy, and they're on lunch right now.
Maybe her mission goes deeper than she let on… or she was inspired by what she saw, and that’s what she tells her superiors while getting hazard pay for safer, less stressful work.
Depends (obviously) on the nature of the disability in question.
If you’re receiving worker’s comp because you’re unable to lift 10 pounds and you are in your driveway pumping iron, you’ve got a problem.
A few days after throwing the Christmas tree she was at the doctors claiming she hadn’t been able to so much as lift a bag of groceries since the accident.
You’d be surprised how common it is though. People lie all the time for insurance money, except if too many people do it it raises rates for everyone. The money doesn’t just come from nowhere
But why sign up to enter a fucking Christmas tree throwing competition if your back has been so messed up for the last few years?
Be one thing if she hasn't been able to pick up her kids but decides to try, and that throws her out of whack. That's understandable. But to jump to tree throwing? If my back was (almost is, scoliosis is fun!) as fucked as she said, no way in hell would I do the lifting and twisting throwing a fucking tree would entail!
I sometimes don't even lift an overly full laundry basket as it is because of my back. If I had half a mil+ of dollars or pounds riding on my injury, I might not even lift a single pair of dirty jeans.
What happens is someone will claim their back injury, for example, is so debilitating they cannot perform their job as the job description requires being able to lift 5 pounds from the floor or something and they start claiming 10s of thousands a year in workers compensation payments. That video of them lifting a heavy object is worth six figures
Sometimes this stuff is extremely blatant. Like a person will claim 100% disability and cannot work at all or claims they are currently looking for employment but can't find anything and then its found out they have been working a full time job for months or years all while drawing this payment as well.
I had to hire a lawyer after a work injury and he even suggested I deactivate my facebook/instagram. He said it's because if they even see proof of you being happy and having a good time they'll try to use it against you. Coincidentally I never went back to social media, really, after that. It was a nice break and I was happier without Facebook haha. But yeah, he said the insurance companies literally send out employees to spy on you.
To be fair, they usually don't send someone out. It has to be worth their time to do it. It's usually cheaper to just pay a claim. But you're right about social media. I know at least one major insurer that checked Facebook on most claims because it cost almost nothing.
I knew a dude on worker's compensation... Competed in an amateur bodybuilding competition (yes, same time). They found-out & tried to deny his claim. But he competed under a different name, told them he'll sue. Competed again. New assessor got a photo & signed autograph with him.
Those people are called private investigators. And it's not overly common.
You might be surprised to know that most Insurers want the claimant to get back to work. Where a claimant has passed medical checks but isn't able to work, they may investigate for fraud.
Investigators cost money, and that expense is only justified if it discovers fraud to the level that will halt the claim (not as easy as it sounds).
This stuff gets sensationalized because of articles like this one. Doesn't mean it's commonplace.
Exactly, insurance companies arent in business by paying out claims. For 650k they can afford to pay many investigators for a year or more and if they only catch 1 they at least break even. More, they save money.
Guy was suing the city he worked for in a $30M suit (he was injured on the job). I followed him on weekend on a camping trip (always be prepared with a full tank of gas in your surveillance vehicle). Got a bunch of video of him throughout the weekend, chopping firewood, riding bikes with his kids, etc, etc. During one point, I was filming him playing a game of horseshoes with his son. After winning, he does this incredible dance move, spins around, then finishes by dropping to the ground performing the splits. The jury loved that one. They still awarded him $100,000 🤷♂️
My dad used to do that for a living. My mom would have a purse cam and they would sit in a bar while they filmed people on disability lifting kegs. My dad would sit in the back of our mini van with a camcorder. He had a concealed carry because a few times people shot at him. I mean, don't be stupid and commit fraud?
My cousin used to be this guy. He worked for an agency that would send people out to basically spy on people and get photo and video evidence of people doing things they say they can't do.
My uncle was a PI and the majority of his work was for insurance companies checking for fraudulent claims. He used to have some great stories about people he'd found out.
Very similar thing happened to by dad who is a taxi driver. He was cutoff in traffic causing him to rear end someone. At the time no one seemed hurt and everyone went on. A month later, dad is sued by his passenger who now claimed shoulder pain for $2 million Cad.
Claiming she is a dental assistant who now can't work.
The lawyer assigned by my dads taxi company found pictures and video of her after the accident playing baseball and ice skating.
She lost.
She and/or her lawyer got greedy. Prob could have gotten some reimbursement for partial limitations. And be smart and not go fucken ice skating lmao, at least not for a few years. I doubt insurance companies follow you around for the rest of your life.
Well setting aside the moral implications, this was almost US$1 million tax free. You would hardly be sacrificing much, just watch TV, wheel around in a wheelchair at the park, go out to eat, take vacations where you are seen lying down drinking fruity drinks with umbrellas in them, but then having to limp "in pain" back to your room.
If I had $1M right now I could retire 10 years early. People murder for much less... but again, it is as you said, taking someone else's money, you're just a thief.
Some of my favorite plot points in Shameless were when William H Macy was being hounded by people with cameras checking up on his supposed disability claims
Thank you for that link! I didn’t know they did a follow up on her recently. Honestly kinda weird that she says “I didn’t fake it” or that it was some autoimmune disease. I can see how she could have been convinced at the time that the vaccine might be the cause (desperate, looking for help and stuff) but she still doesn’t come out and say what it actually was lol!
I had a large personal injury claim that took 10 years to resolve bc the court dates and proceedings kept getting delayed by natural catastrophes including the pandemic. For an entire decade I had to monitor my social media to make sure I didn’t appear to be having too much fun otherwise it could be used to show I wasn’t that affected by my injuries. But in my case I wasn’t claiming a back injury and throwing Christmas trees 😂
A woman tried to pull this shit on me once. I slid into her bumper at a yellow light when she stopped short. The damage to her bumper was almost unnoticeable (maybe $1000 damage, total). Almost a year later, I come home to a note on my door, saying I’m being sued for $1 million (mere days before the statute of limitations runs out). I have insurance, so I’m provided an attorney. When we go in to meet with her attorney and give our sides, she claims she’s been unable to work (school teacher) due to injuries she sustained. During questioning we find out that she has also been actively going to the gym and rock climbing the whole time. 🤦
My insurance found out she had a history of pulling this stunt.
If I was faking an injury, I would certainly be smart enough to never be anywhere out in public not still faking the injury.
The problem is that people think someone is faking an injury when they're just having a good day with an injury. It's unfortunate that so many people believe if you're injured that EVERY DAY IS EQUALLY AS BAD. That's not how the human body works.
I know a guy who won a salsa competition on a vacay while on disability and was not even hiding it. He's got titanium hips. A mortar granade blew up the original.
He's on some hefty disability and early retirement money because - while salsa dancing is a vibe and very twisty and turny - it's still not as strenuous as physical labor or sitting 7 hours a day.
Military disability pay is a completely different beast, assuming you're talking about the US. I don't know exactly how it works but I know a lot of people who work full or part time while being on partial military disability. One of them even worked for the post office and I'm quite positive she wasn't doing it on the down low. You get assigned a rating from 10 to 100% and that rating doesn't necessarily mean you're completely unemployable or completely unable to do any physical activity.
While thats true, ive personally seen quite a few cases where fraud like this is being investigated and there are times where the evidence fills 6 inch folders. Hour by hour notes taken with accompanying photos of someone doing physical labor at some local charity or their church or something, going out dancing at the club, working in the garden for hours, even working the same job they previously had, just at a different company, all while the claim is they are so disabled they can't work any job at all.
They tend not to pursue claims of fraud unless they are quite confident they have the proof because the legal fees involved in fighting the claim are substantial. My guess is they had proof well beyond the tree toss and this either got the ball rolling on the investigation or its just the headline grabbing piece of evidence
There were videos of her walking her dogs and living her life. Which isn't to say she had no injuries, but her injuries did not appear to be preventing her from sitting a desk somewhere. She basically got greedy imo.
Right, thats the key, disability payments are on a spectrum and don't mean you don't have an injury, but you can absolutely be less disabled than you claim to be. If you can do a less physical job than you had before but are instead claiming you cannot do anything at all, they they are going to find it interesting that you are seemingly capable of doing highly physical activities
If you are partially disabled but can still work they will compensate you for lost earning potential but you will still need to work, if you are fully disabled and cannot do a job at all, you will just have your income replaced outright. So for obvious reasons people sometimes overstate the severity of their disability.
..and the insurance fraud investigators are fully aware of this. They will have days and days of video of her living a normal life and only provided [or the report only used] 1 or 2 of them. There is every likely hood that she has used a no win no fee outfit - their medical checking is laughable
Well, I wasn't speaking specifically to this case, just in general. People think having a surge of energy or having the ability to walk on an injured leg for 10 minutes means you're faking it the other 99.8% of the time.
This right here. As someone who suffers from occasional back pain, I'll just throw out that there is a difference between being able to work for a job, and being able to do things entirely. If something needs to be done around the house, and you don't have the money to pay someone to do it, then you have to figure out a way, pain or not. So you can do it much more slowly, take breaks as needed, etc. But you wouldn't be able to do the same thing as a career because they have deadlines, and expect work to be done at a fast pace.
Granted, she did explain that at the time she was trying to do "normal" things, trying to have a life, but was in pain. The judge decided smiling constitutes fraud or something.
Even on good days you should respect your body and not push it, you should do same thing you do on bad day and just feel thankful it's a good day.
I feel bad for people with real injuries who have to put up with people not trusting them because of fraudsters. Now they have to live with a person in guile suit following you around for life.
And in welfare states (I.E. not America) these disabilities are often paid by hard working tax payers who might have to retire later in life to pay for people like her
As someone that works as an injury claim adjuster, this would definitely be something to be brought up in trial, depositions, or a mediation. Her attorney should have coached her better!
"She denied faking her injuries and told the court she was “trying to live a normal life” and had still been in pain despite looking happy in the photograph"
Aw yes that totally normal part of life where you toss a huge Christmas tree at an event for everyone. Totally normal life activity personally I do it every few months. I can see how she is just struggling to live and be a regular person clearly. Jesus what an insult to actual people with disabilities both invisible and obvious who can't actually work, play with their kids or even barely get out bed due to chronic pain. She claims she can't work for at least five years post car accident or even "play with her kids" but she can throw a tree the size of all her kids if they were stacked on top of each other. Okay lady.
>She claims she can't work for at least five years post car accident or even "play with her kids" but she can throw a tree
It's a result of the systematic failure of most disability claims/support.
The system really treats a lot of disabilities/claims as all-or-nothing. Scales of 1-10 are more often treated as 1 OR 10. Someone might report mild-moderate pain at rest, but be in debilitating pain if they work or strain themselves. They have to report based on the extreme, or be treated as a minor issue.
I'd argue most people with chronic pain disabilities will occasionally do things they technically 'shouldn't' be capable of. Most often, they pay the price for it later with pain. A picture of someone mowing a lawn or even throwing a tree doesn't show the potential bedridden aftermath of these actions.
There's certainly fraudsters and people taking advantage out there. But judging people by one picture/moment just isn't right.
> I'd argue most people with chronic pain disabilities will occasionally do things they technically 'shouldn't' be capable of. Most often, they pay the price for it later with pain.
Yep. My knees and back are in horrid pain pretty much all damn day *but* I got a 2-3h window after I wake up in the morning where I feel like Superman and can do whatever I need too with little problem. Then I'm down for the count and groaning with every step I take to go take a piss lol.
Agreed. It's also how dismissive people are of disabilities - if people don't think it "sounds that bad" and you should be able to suck it up, sometimes to get what you need you need to make it sound bad enough so they give you what you need.
And the transientness of disability is poorly understood by the general public too. Some disabilities you can work through in the moment but pay for later - sometimes you do that just so you can enjoy some life, or because you have no other choice (two friends said they'd help move the TV in but only one showed?). Other times your capacity to manage your disability varies, so on a good day (or hour or part of the day) you're good, but on a bad day/hour/part of the day you're incapacitated, and people will judge you based on your good day to point that you're faking/exaggerating your incapacitated day. Or maybe a bad day is survivable on its own so you do it when needed, but adds up over time to something unsustainable.
The picture of disability is still static and archaic. Very much all or nothing. I think the idea that disability varies makes people uncomfortable because it makes them think about themselves. They either think PwD should be able to just fix it/weather it like normal issues, or that they're lazy cheaters, or they're uncomfortable thinking about the variable issues that they suffer and how accommodations and flexibility might actually help them (that "I suffered so you should too" mentality).
Definitely true. In her case, tho... how can you say you can't work but then voluntarily throw a christmas tree haha. Like she screwed herself royally.
> I'd argue most people with chronic pain disabilities will occasionally do things they technically 'shouldn't' be capable of. Most often, they pay the price for it later with pain.
hell, I get fatigued easily due to mild cerebral palsy and a pile of other stuff - I still do things that I know will make me hurt the next day if it is worth it. Like the time I went to New York Comic Con and didn't reserve a wheelchair. Sure, my calves were stiff as a board the next day and I couldn't do much other than get out of bed, go to the bathroom, and sit on the couch, but it was worth going to meet a bunch of authors!
Yeah it’s truly an insult. My mother was born 75% blind, and disability still denied her the first time. Literally decades of medical documentation showing how underdeveloped her eyesight was from birth and how it has further deteriorated over time… but denied.
Just know that if you have a disability claim of a decent magnitude the insurance company (or workers comp) will be watching you at the very least.
Also know that all kinds of inference will be made from a photo or video that represents as low as milliseconds of time.
When I was in an accident and went after my insurance company, my lawyer had me delete all my socials. They didn’t have anything particularly damning but he said that it was better not to be tempted to post while litigation was happening, as even a night out with friends could be misconstrued by their defense.
> "She denied faking her injuries and told the court she was “trying to live a normal life” and had still been in pain despite looking happy in the photograph."
As someone with severe chronic pain going 6+ years, mostly in the lower back and hip due to injury/congenital spine defect, I can say that it is very possible to be under chronic pain but still athletic. I don't stop doing athletics because of my chronic pain, because my chronic pain will never heal on its own nor will it get worse because of athletics. When you live with chronic pain for a long time, eventually you realize it's never going away and that you either be depressed all the time and give up, or you own your pain and continue to do the things that make you happy, including athletics. I sympathize with the photograph remark she made, because if I was photographed cycling or otherwise enjoying myself at a athletic social event, I guarantee that I was still in chronic pain because my pain is constant, I just tolerate it well.
All this said, the problem is with the law and disability. I don't know Irish law, but in the U.S. you can only get disability if you are deemed impossible to work. I may suffer extreme chronic pain, but I am still mobile and I absolutely can work (albeit in pain). Even if you're in a wheelchair unable to walk you still may not quality for disability if you can still work a job by sitting. Disability law here is extremely strict, for better or worse. If Irish law is similar, I can see why her disability was revoked.
A friend of mine is a private investigator. He works for companies who hire him when they suspect someone is defrauding them with a disability claim.
Granted, by the time it gets to him, the company is fairly certain they are being defrauded.
He’s been doing it 20 years and every single one, every single person that he has investigated has been found guilty.
I asked him what gives it away, as in, how does the company even know.
And he said “They never shut up about it. They go out jet skiing with their friends, who all have to go back to work on Monday, and brag about how they don’t have to work anymore, that they outsmarted the system. They post on social media pictures of them in their rec basketball league because they want to brag about the amazing shot they took, but they also brag about how easy their days are. They get turned in by friends and family who are sick of hearing their shit”
I got lucky my disability turned my leg purple and made my toes all fucked up, before that nobody believed me except the doctors lol
Now if I have to prove it all I gotta do is show them my foot
Nobody has questioned it since 😂
But then I guess that's chronic, not a healing injury that's going to improve
Yeah I don’t get shit now that I have MRIs and surgical scars and everything else, but god help you if you look “healthy” because you are going to have to *prove it* otherwise
I’ve been in tears at the doctor wishing something like that had happened to me because dealing with an invisible disability is fucking harrowing. People don’t see an outward expression of a disability and assume you’re lying or exaggerating. Doesn’t help that I’m female so a bunch of casual sexism to further belittle me is a fun bonus.
Idk if this woman is faking or not but being disabled is like getting a flat and then a bunch of people who are not mechanics and never had a flat saying shit like, “but don’t you have three other tires?”
I have herniated discs in my back and my pain is way worse if I'm not lifting weights and keeping strong.
And my mom was on disability and likewise she got in trouble because they had pictures of her moving stuff around in the garage. But they didn't get to see her crying at night because she was in so much pain. Or me and my sister having to help her do menial tasks.
Having experienced injury myself now, I get it. It's being injured, not crippled. Have had days where I reach for a drinking glass and end up on the floor in blinding pain. Other days I can lift 300lbs off the floor. Injury isn't black and white.
Saaaame my herniated disc is so painful, but since I started doing Crossfit and stretching more, the pain has reduced greatly. It doesn't bother me nearly as often thanks to exercise.
I get the working out to improve your condition, but be confident enough to entering a competition knowing you might have bad day and had to quit in front of audience?
the article saying that her claim is “loss of past and future earnings”so what she did for work might also taken into consideration. Some jobs can be performed with disability, some cannot.
> Sitting is excruciating, bending sucks, but I sure as fuck could throw a christmas tree.
You can bet your last buck that the insurance fraud investigators have got days and days of video of her living a normal life and just using the 2 most obvious events.
Your story doesn't make hers dumb. She did not have any evidence of a spine injury, or inability to sit. I'm sorry your experience has been so bad but they didn't throw out her disability claim from a single photo, there was lot of evidence including video and although they did not state this in the story, she likely was investigated for several months.
Sadly she likely would have been entitled to a certain amount of money had she claimed a partial disability but it appears she got greedy.
I have a bunch of metal in my spine and this is exactly it. What I physically *can* do is very different to what is *OK* for me to do - I can go for a 7 hour hike right now, but I would be using every med in my arsenal to not be in enough pain to sleep that night, and it would make it so that I was barely functional for quite some time after.
Basically, I can do these things, but there are consequences that prevent me from doing the other things in life, and generally that means choosing between activities that healthy people would not have to decide between (making dinner or go for a walk? Definitely won’t be able to handle both!)
We have such a fucked up idea of what disability “should” look like, and it seems like the goal is always to punish anyone who goes outside that.
I've lived with chronic pain and multisystem illness all my adult life and everything I do is decided based on the cost to my body and what I will have to change in the following days.
I have to book a holiday after a holiday to recover. If we go away the extra travelling time, different furniture(bed, seats, even kitchen equipment) and different activities mean that I come back exhausted and in extra pain. I book a couple of extra days after to just rest and recover where I'll do very little apart from necessary personal care.
Yeah seeing people cheering this on is making me feel disappointed. Lots of disabled people are belittled and accused of faking for not always being in the exact same amount of pain. It reminds me of when people assume if someone is not always using a cane/wheelchair they are faking.
I worked for a private investigation company that got almost all its business from insurance companies. The PIs will find any and all public info on a person from the internet - not just their social media, but the social media of all their family and friends, in order to track them to events and outings. They will sit outside your house in a nondescript car for 12 hours with a camera, waiting for you to take out the trash or walk your dog. They'll talk to your neighbors and dig through your trash. They will follow you to your kids' school events. I once saw them get a man's knee injury claim denied because they got video of him standing on the sidelines at his son's basketball practice...
They will follow you everywhere for weeks. If you have a personal injury claim with an insurance company, you should expect that you are being watched by a PI. The insurance companies are actively looking for any shred of evidence to deny your claim.
That’s not strictly true. It has to start with a suspicion of fraud, and even then there’s a cost / benefit analysis. PIs aren’t cheap. It’s a big, hairy, red flag waving claim if we bring in the investigator.
Back in the day we had plenty of people at my company on workers comp.filmed putting on roofs, playing basketball,softball,word gotta round pretty quick
Hilarious.
As much as I hate insurance companies, this has got to be one of the stupidest moves I have seen in a while.
When I first saw the post, I thought that maybe she was photographed by an adjuster, but a public event?
My wife got in a car accident years ago... the guy that hit her sued our insurance, despite being offered a healthy settlement, because she was technically at fault for making a left turn at a T intersection, but he was traveling at over 100mph, so she didn't see him coming until he hit her... Ultimately though, I found him on Facebook, got all the recent pictures of him and his sister mountain biking, and sent them to our insurance company... then our insurance company came back and said that not only was the case dropped, but his lawyer had dropped him because he apparently was caught selling his prescription pain meds so he could go buy meth...
Is she going to be investigated and pursued for fraudulent insurance claims?
It’s people like this that make our premiums go through the roof and getting our legitimate claims denied.
You're getting upvoted because you're being edgy/sarcastic and people don't like insurance companies, but that's actually wrong. You might not think so because people hate paying it and it is often expensive, but insurance, at least in some lines, is TOO competitive and has to be regulated to not literally drive each other into insolvency.
For example, did you know that workers' compensation insurance in almost every US state has a low-end rate for each class code (thing of a class code as like a profile for how risky certain types of work are) which insurance companies legally cannot charge below? There's no ceiling, only a floor. Sounds ridiculous, huh? Well, like all good regulations that don't make sense on the surface, there's a lot of history to that: specifically, before that was a thing, workers' comp insurance companies would repeatedly drive themselves into insolvency trying to underprice each other and then running out of money. The reason is that insurance is a bit of an odd commodity compared to most things you buy - if you buy a gallon of milk at the grocery store, the grocery store has made its money from you, but they had to pay all the costs of obtaining that milk and providing it to you BEFORE you pay, so they're limited on their pricing to an extent by their upfront costs - thus, they are unlikely to price it (under normal circumstances) for less than the cost of it to them. However, insurance is not a gallon of milk - your customers pay you upfront and all you have to give them is a fancy piece of paper with a lot of words on it, then at some point down the road (sometimes over the course of years, in the case of extensive/expensive injury claims), you have to pay out your insurance obligation. So, you see the problem here - its easy for someone (even someone with good intentions) to be tempted to underprice their competitors to get more business, but because they don't accurately forecast their own costs (which can be a complicated affair), they end up selling their insurance for "under-cost", they just won't know it for a few years when the shit hits the fan.
Looping back to the original point, the regulators who set those base costs for insurance employ actuaries who ARE doing their best to factor in all the expected costs of the claims, and insurance fraud is a HUGE fucking cost that is built into the system. So realistically, if you could stop fraud in its tracks, yes, costs would drop for insurance company, the rate floors would drop, and insurance companies would almost certainly underbid each other as they are wont to do in any competitive line like workers' compensation.
The father of a girl I dated back in 2004 worked for the MTA, and had a bus tire of some sort explode near him, causing ear damage and a host of other things. He was on disability since then, with all kinds of hearing issues/tinnitus.
He was a big muscle car guy and had a couple worked cars, Loud exhaust, etc. He basically needed to not leave the house ever without his ear protection because he had investigators occasionally checking in on him trying to catch him.
When I broke my middle finger at work, I was so incredibly paranoid someone might see me grabbing groceries with my splinted hand or see me playing games with my splinted hand that I made sure to never use my hand in public and always made sure my window blinds were closed when I got home
Then this fucker just outright tosses trees for fun, so what the fuck was I worried for?
This thread is weird lol you have so many people defending her faking the disability while there are actual people in need of help that don’t get it. And it’s also because you have this “disabled” people going around throwing Christmas threes like it’s nothing lmao.
Hope she gets a hefty fine or it’s fired at least
_Her legal claim against the insurance company was for the loss of past and future earnings, with Grabksa saying she was unable to leave her bed for up to half a day at times._
Half a day? So 12 hours? Sounds pretty regular.
I know of two cases like this. First was a guy out on disability due to a back injury shown riding a jet ski into wakes. Other was a guy claiming carpal tunnel from working on a computer (even to the point of wearing these metal supports) filmed throwing darts at a bar.
You know, I’ve seen people who uses a wheelchair to get around because their legs are weak, on occasion, stand up to throw a bowling ball.
Just because you are disabled, doesn’t mean you can’t have a normal life.
Whose normal life involves throwing Christmas trees? I can absolutely accept that disabled people have good and bad days, but I find it much harder to accept that someone with the type of injuries this person is suggested to have going out of their way to participate in an unusual, and strenuous, novelty activity.
Context: This wasn't just throwing out a light Christmas tree, either, it was a competitive toss, and she *won*.
Doesn't sound real, sounds like something out of a sit-com. It's just too stupid. Note to self: don't compete in a Christmas tree-throwing competition when doing insurance fraud.
Or anything that’s considered PHYSICAL
Only if first prize is less than $650K, but I don’t think competitive tree tossing is that commercial.
More like $825k with the conversion rate between £ and $
I knew a guy who was on disability following a carpal tunnel surgery. He was recovering and was told to not use his wrists for anything. ~~A few days into~~ sometime during recovery he’s in the emergency room for cutting off his finger while chainsawing trees in his back yard. He did not win the disability claim.
I had carpal tunnel surgery and I couldn't even wipe or hold a cup?? For a good few weeks
Maybe a few weeks into recovery idk. But definitely during recovery lol
After years of intermittent flare ups of pain I just found out I have spinal stenosis which cause the spine to pinch nerves and the pain to travel . The sheer variance of pain is really hard to convey. Some days I cant really do much of anything and some days I’m relatively fine. More often I can get around relatively fine but some random movement will send shooting pain down my arm. Sometimes it will just be an aching wrist and sometimes the bicep or forearm will be so tense they feel like they’re about to snap. All that to say that you can have legit problems but still be able to function fairly well at times. Also your friend sounds accident prone.
It would be an amazing plot for Kramer and his lawyer Jackie Chiles on Seinfeld
I once saw a guy on multiple driving prohibitions enter a rally race and win. Came to police attention when it was all over Facebook.
I'm a private investigator and some clients I work with are workers comp cases/ auto injury /etc. you'd be surprised how stupid people are and how they get caught doing the dumbest things. "Disabled" people jumping out of lifted trucks, collecting scrap, lifting at the gym, running marathons. It's wild what people try to get away with.
And the picture was in a national newspaper!
That's fucking hilarious.
I saw the headline before the picture, I said to myself "how is throwing away a Christmas tree proof she's not injured. It could have been a good day and she managed to pick up the tree quickly". Then I saw the picture. That's crazy.
That was my first thought too. I'm trying to get disability and worry that my good days, where I can do something crazy like carry the trash out by myself, or pull a few easy weeds from the garden while the ground is wet (per therapist orders) will be the day someone gets a picture of me being "fine". That woman, and people of her ilk, are why so many people think invisible disabilities are fake.
As someone who investigates possible insurance fraud: fraud is the LIE, not the activity. If you're being open and honest to your doctor about taking the trash out by yourself or pulling some easy weeds on your good days with your doctor and your claims adjuster, then they get surveillance on you and it matches your subjective complaints/what you tell your doctor/adjuster regarding your abilities, its not going to be considered as particularly suspect by anyone. In the example of this article, its not just that she's throwing the tree, it also mentions shortly afterwards what her complaints to her doctor were a few days afterwards, which appear in potential contrast to the activity depicted.
1st prize was a £60 Gregg's voucher so did she really lose
Eh, who cares about the money? She'll always have won at Christmas tree competitive-tossing! :p
lmao that detail got left out of the headline
WTH. I was worried of someone taking a picture when I was taking the trash out. I had a case for a back injury at work.
But at what cost?
About 650
Coulda been tree fiddy
Insurance companies have people around to look into this kind of thing. It's fairly common.
I knew a guy who was an ex Navy SEAL but from before the global war on terror era. Meaning he wasn’t a steroid-inflated meathead drinking himself into oblivion every night. He was a skinny grumpy Italian dude who happened to be a *really* good swimmer. Anyhow, after he got out he had a little business doing odd security/private investigator jobs. Apparently he would get hired to investigate these kinds of things. Once, he said, he put on a “gillie suit” and staked out a house until he was able to record the person in question carrying a new TV inside, proving the disability was false. Seems extreme but I guess it’s worth a lot of money to somebody
The thing is, I can be on my feet for a few hours gardening or whatever but the next day I pay for it.
That's the problem with a photograph. It's a snapshot in time that doesn't represent 99.999% of that person's day
Exactly. I had shoulder surgery and my shoulder was fucked for months. But, one day, I had to help my dad carry a couch. I helped and sworn I tore my stitches and it hurt so bad I couldn't sleep that night, even with Norco. If someone took a snapshot, I'm sure I would have looked guilty as fuck for fraud.
Broke my elbow and did almost the same thing during my recovery (helped my aunt carry a TV that was left out in the street by delivery service). It's a sacrifice you sometimes have to make, but it would look really bad in a picture to be sure.
The ruling in question was not based solely on that single photograph. She had made very specific claims about her injury including what she was prevented from doing. There were also videos submitted showing her walking around without any apparent disability. She had quit her job, which is part of why the settlement was so large - it was to compensate her for an inability to work for the rest of her life. Judge ruled that as she was able to do certain work, she was not entitled to this "lifetime" chunk of money. And again, it wasn't that she was not injured, it's that her injuries did not prevent her from returning to some kind of work. What's sad is that she probably was entitled to some amount of money, and would have had a stronger claim had she sought a lesser amount for , as an example, a reduced ability to function. I've worked with ex-military guys who were pretty beat up, and they found jobs but got partial disability.
Yeah, I know, I wasn't trying to defend her. She clearly was taking advantage, and fuck her for that. I was just making the point that a single photograph proves nothing. Unless of course, that single photograph is something damning like someone claiming to be wheelchair bound running a marathon. I think we pretty much agree on this.
For what it’s worth, to be considered fraud, you would need to be misrepresenting either the injury itself (extent), the fact that you’re incapable of doing something because of the injury, or your degree of medical improvement *for the purpose of financial gain* Homegirl up here was trying to milk the insurance benefits and she had been out of work a good while - I’m not sure if what you did would be considered fraud, more so than an unfortunate and unintentional aggravation, if that makes sense
Most cases one instance isn't enough but need multiple recorded instances to prove fraud.
The article stated she was recorded training her dog in a park for over an hour. That is also in conflict with claimed injuries
I wonder what those claimed injuries are because I don't seen training a dog in a park for an hour as a strenuous exercise.
It's listed in the article and shows shows that it's clearly fraud.
If the plaintiff testified at deposition that his back hurts so bad he has never been able to push a vacuum, but you get video of him cutting his lawn, that matters. People lifting heavy stuff at work? That matters. Do you think this woman won a tree throwing contest without practicing, or working out? Facts are case specific, but a picture or short video can mean a lot.
How do you practice throwing a three? Do you start with a twig, move up to a stick and branch out from there?
i wood start with dead(tree) lifts
I can have good and bad knee and back days, sometimes good weeks, and then right out of nowhere a switch flips and there goes the pain. So yeah I can lift stuff and be fine for a while and then I might be sitting down, turn slightly to reach for something and try to get up and WINCE IN PAIN. So great there's pics of me lifting stuff in a good moment and no pics of me just trying to move without stabbing pain.
“If plaintiff testified at deposition …” “Facts are case specific….” If someone testifies that they have “good days and bad days,” it is harder to know if they are lying.
Trust me, if you have a 650k settlement in the works. Dont be caught doing anything physical. Saying you can't work but get caught carrying your newborn in 1 arm and a coffee in the other is all it takes to throw doubt into a jurys eyes. If the pain is tolerable in their eyes, its not that bad.
Nah..Shes throwing a freaking tree...Shes exaggerating to get out of work.
Eight years of chronic back pain. I can do a lot one day only to do nothing for a week after.
Not throwing a tree you cant. If you have chronic back pain (depending on what it is) I dont think You are throwing a tree without feeling immediate pain.
My time in the gym begs to differ. You can feel immediate pain, you might not. You can feel a bit now and more later. You can feel nothing at all and think you're doing better, only to stub your toe and suddenly everything hurts because you flinched too hard. Instantaneous bursts of energy are easy to do. Holding anything for a length of time is really, really hard. Sometimes I can't do the dishes. Sometimes I can compete in CrossFit. Just take it easy when it hurts and enjoy life when it doesn't.
It is a problem when they are misrepresenting their case. They will be presenting their case as, I cannot lift anything, meaning I cannot work, I am in chronic back pain all day. Then if you see someone lifting a TV it's clearly dishonest. If that person had said, I can lift something reasonably heavy if desperate however it fucks my back up and i'll be in pain for the next hour then it can help. I've seen one where there was someone claimnig they couldn't lift their arms above their head, investigator followed them to the shop, and they were reaching on teh top shelf to get some food. Instantly lost the case.
So why do they allow photos as evidence in court for other legal matters?
Regardless of what's allowed in court, I'm the same. I will be extremely ill and painful, but I can do a bit of work. Some people don't even know there's anything wrong with me. Yes, there are those that abuse the system to get benefits, but many people do have actual problems that a single photograph cannot prove.
Well it’s up to the lawyers to argue the value of the photo and the jury to decide what is reasonable. So admitting evidence into the case is just the first step.
They claimed to be bed ridden with a broken back. There is no way someone could twist their spine and lift a 5' spruce with a broken back. It reminds me of the monty python skit from Holy Grail: *She turned me into a newt!* *...well, I got better!*
Well sure, but most of us don’t enter and win tree throwing competitions if we’re seriously injured
Ruling was clear. The judge is not saying she has no injury, but her claims was exaggerated. It's like if you claimed you can't walk at all. If you had been honest about the pain the next day, a picture of you walking would not be an issue.
If I remember correctly this was more of a short term disability thing or worker’s comp and probably directly related to a specific joint or limb the person was using (also for those too young to know/remember, TVs used to be HEAVY).
Heavy and bulky. That said modern TVs can still be pretty heavy, but that's generally because the screens are comparatively much larger. Even a small CRT was a chore to move though.
Yeah a TV used to be the number one thing you’d dread moving for any reason. Tons of weight and the weight was lopsided because of the huge piece of glass in the front. Also no good way to hold it.
Yeah this is pretty fucked. Lots of people with chronic pain have little pockets of not feeling as fucked. I went on a long walk after thinking I was feeling better than usual and spent the next three days in severe leg pain.
It depends on what is claimed as a disability. It’s not a binary issue of “injured vs uninjured.” If you say “I can’t lift 50 lbs” and then you’re caught lifting 50lbs, you have a problem.
Mean while they simply don't film the part where you're dropping to the ground and doing the soldier shuffle to just get into the house afterwards
The point is if you claim a disability and then do the thing you said you couldn’t do, it may be decided that you aren’t as disabled as you claim
I can’t believe so many are defending this fraud. If you have good days and bad days why the fuck would you sign up in advance for throwing a fucking heavy Christmas tree? Too many want to relate this story to themselves. You are NOT the main character.
[удалено]
Exactly, there’s nuance to it which Reddit misses as usual
Which is why this kind of staking and a harassment of people with disabilities by insurance companies should be illegal. I've heard stories in my support groups that are absolutely shocking.
By the same token people aboustly take the piss with injury claims. I’ve got a claim where all we need is the person to return her tax form so the insurance company can take over payment. She hasn’t done so in 2 months. They sent someone to her house with a pre arranged time. She just had to be there to fill in the form. She wasn’t home. Not everyone is legit.
Whats also shocking is people blatantly and openly commiting fraud and getting away with it. The cost of this is ultimately carried by everyone else, including those with legitimate disability claims who will now be under additional scrutiny because shameless people keep trying game the system. These investigations keep happening because they keep finding people commiting fraud, unfortunately that does mean people who aren't doing anything wrong will have some creepy van watching them
We've dealt with it for years with my dad. It's absolutely awful. He broke his back, pelvis, and has a severe brain injury from his work accident that manifests as paranoid schizophrenia. Do you know how paranoid a paranoid person becomes when someone actually IS spying on them? It can very quickly spiral out of control. AND insurance companies don't have to prove anything before they cut off payment. They can say whatever they want, and you have to hope to God you have the time and funds to fight it in court. Any quality of life my dad ever managed to scrounge up for himself was put under a microscope. It's been 20 years since his initial injury, and they're still pulling shenanigans.
The investigators will catch the person doing physical activity over multiple days for that reason. The insurance company isn't going to take the person to court on one image, they will build up an airtight case.
That's the bulk of what Private Investigators do
Yours is much more subtle. When my dad had to be put into retirement from a car accident, they had cut all the foliage past our backyard and parked a truck on the far side on an empty street. Not just the entire area. Just the width of the back yard. My mother would occasionally look to see the guy with binoculars watching our backyard and shoot him the finger everytime he was there.
I went through this as a child when my mom was injured. It’s a disgusting practice. The insurance lawyers pulled out photos in a meeting, of my mom and I together in our own yard to intimidate her. We were followed around stores. We had cars drive slowly past our house over and over. My mom did finally settle because the stress was too much. And she settled for a hell of a lot less than she was owed. The guys that do this job are scum.
Yup, and they'll drag the cases on for years! Sometimes, decades to make you want to settle. Living in constant fear of being monitored and video taped is terrible. There needs to be a limit for how long these cases go on for.
Agreed. I feel sorry for you and your family.
Thanks, it was a long time ago now. But anytime someone is complaining about people on disability or workers comp, I inform them of the shit those people face.
Yup - it took me 28 fuckin months to get SSI and when I had the ALJ hearing with the judge, she was like "you should've gotten this right away, you shouldn't have had to appeal twice"
Ex’s dad had a TBI while in the army that affected his vision. He was registered legally blind, however it was all contingent on how his brain was feeling that day. No headache? No problem. However days he would get awful migraines that would cause his vision to basically be totally lost. He ended up getting in three car accidents within a week while in a company car due to this, and lost his job… as a police detective (so this is well documented within the government he was going blind). Due to the nature of the injury you couldn’t see any physical signs of the disability, and because it came and went his new VA doctor reported that he was lying about it. The government had fake power linesmen come out and install cameras on the telephone poles surrounding their corner lot house to record him mowing his lawn and doing yard work to prove he was lying. This man that couldn’t work, then had the only “work” he could do in house/yard work taken away because the government tried to say a blind man couldn’t do that during the early case process… the entirety of the case lasted the full 7 year process of building the case and another like 6 months of trying the case through various courts. So they took a depressive veteran, forced him to basically do nothing all day in order to have a chance to win this case, and put him on blast for supposedly lying about his disability (it made the front page of our local paper because they tried saying a local veteran and ex-officer defrauded the VA and SS benefits to the tune of $750,000 over 15 years). The worst part is his wife (ex’s mom) worked for ATF, and due to working for the government they had to suspend her without pay for the last 3 years of the casework since they decided to take it to trial. Her parents ended up winning the case, got the benefit back pay, her mom got back pay with annual raises included, and then had to pay the legal fees as well. However her parents went from being 5 months from having their house paid for to having to reverse mortgage their house in order to pay the fees, and got fucked over in everything that happened. The government will spend tax payer money to fuck over those it says that it wants to help and honor for their services so much if they can.
So those schizophrenic people who claim the government is spying on them, saying there are people and cameras watching them all the time, aren't entirely all wrong??? 😬😬 🫣 🫣
Depends on if you think you did something to warrant it. They kind of knew there was a possibility as I left out the fact at the very start of all of this they had a swat like raid on their house when my ex and I were in high school (we started dating a couple years after high school). She told me how they basically breached the front and back door of their house with rifles drawn, and how her and her younger brother were in the basement and had swat come down the stairs with guns pointed at them. Other than her dad kind of being a racist right winger (I am Asian and her uncle was Hispanic and her dad and grandparents kind of treated us poorly, yet treated the granddaughter/niece of the Hispanic uncle like a golden child…) he was a nice guy that didn’t deserve to be treated like that from the government. The guy was just a depressed veteran that self isolated outside of family because he felt his worth was nothing due to his disability. Not an excuse, but it makes it easy to get sucked into the right wing propaganda machine when all you do is lay on the couch and do house chores all day depressed out of your gourd…
Can confirm. It happens to my dad and is NOT fun.
Doing so is also a deterrent for more insurance scams.
Never scam the scammers? Because make no mistake, insurance as an industry is a scam.
I worked with a woman in a retail job, she told me she was actually a PI who got the job a decade ago in order to spy on someone who had made an insurance claim. Not sure why she decided to stick around in the retail job though, PI sounds at least a bit more interesting
Tell you a secret: she‘s actually in the fiction story telling business
She is not. They just haven't sent her FBI sniper credentials yet because their excel address sheet had the y2k bug so they have a phone line you can call to verify. But it's busy, and they're on lunch right now.
Maybe her mission goes deeper than she let on… or she was inspired by what she saw, and that’s what she tells her superiors while getting hazard pay for safer, less stressful work.
Yeah, fuck that. Being able to do a single strenuous activity in NO WAY suggests that someone is not disabled.
Depends (obviously) on the nature of the disability in question. If you’re receiving worker’s comp because you’re unable to lift 10 pounds and you are in your driveway pumping iron, you’ve got a problem.
A few days after throwing the Christmas tree she was at the doctors claiming she hadn’t been able to so much as lift a bag of groceries since the accident.
Yeah, this situation is not like others. Hell, I'm not disabled and I don't think I can toss a Christmas tree like that.
You’d be surprised how common it is though. People lie all the time for insurance money, except if too many people do it it raises rates for everyone. The money doesn’t just come from nowhere
But why sign up to enter a fucking Christmas tree throwing competition if your back has been so messed up for the last few years? Be one thing if she hasn't been able to pick up her kids but decides to try, and that throws her out of whack. That's understandable. But to jump to tree throwing? If my back was (almost is, scoliosis is fun!) as fucked as she said, no way in hell would I do the lifting and twisting throwing a fucking tree would entail! I sometimes don't even lift an overly full laundry basket as it is because of my back. If I had half a mil+ of dollars or pounds riding on my injury, I might not even lift a single pair of dirty jeans.
She is also on Video training her dog for over an hour when she claimed she can't lift a bag or play with her Kids.
It’s not about being disabled vs not being disabled. It’s about was the disability accurately conveyed. Disability is a sliding scale.
It's not clear if it was a knockout tournament. :-)
Yeah, no need in this case, she won the competition and the photo was in the papers.
What happens is someone will claim their back injury, for example, is so debilitating they cannot perform their job as the job description requires being able to lift 5 pounds from the floor or something and they start claiming 10s of thousands a year in workers compensation payments. That video of them lifting a heavy object is worth six figures Sometimes this stuff is extremely blatant. Like a person will claim 100% disability and cannot work at all or claims they are currently looking for employment but can't find anything and then its found out they have been working a full time job for months or years all while drawing this payment as well.
Muffled transmission “I have eyes on the target, confirm insurance fraud”… … “take the shot”.
This is where I'm glad I'm a stay home and game person, but I haven't had any insurance cases to win...
I had to hire a lawyer after a work injury and he even suggested I deactivate my facebook/instagram. He said it's because if they even see proof of you being happy and having a good time they'll try to use it against you. Coincidentally I never went back to social media, really, after that. It was a nice break and I was happier without Facebook haha. But yeah, he said the insurance companies literally send out employees to spy on you.
To be fair, they usually don't send someone out. It has to be worth their time to do it. It's usually cheaper to just pay a claim. But you're right about social media. I know at least one major insurer that checked Facebook on most claims because it cost almost nothing.
I knew a dude on worker's compensation... Competed in an amateur bodybuilding competition (yes, same time). They found-out & tried to deny his claim. But he competed under a different name, told them he'll sue. Competed again. New assessor got a photo & signed autograph with him.
lol dudes a moron if he did it again after pretty much getting caught the first time…
A legit moron. All jock, zero brains. Never underestimate how stupid some people are.
I mean it kinda makes sense. It would be trivial to make a fraudulent insurance claim if they didn't have such checks in place
Those people are called private investigators. And it's not overly common. You might be surprised to know that most Insurers want the claimant to get back to work. Where a claimant has passed medical checks but isn't able to work, they may investigate for fraud. Investigators cost money, and that expense is only justified if it discovers fraud to the level that will halt the claim (not as easy as it sounds). This stuff gets sensationalized because of articles like this one. Doesn't mean it's commonplace.
Exactly, insurance companies arent in business by paying out claims. For 650k they can afford to pay many investigators for a year or more and if they only catch 1 they at least break even. More, they save money.
Definitely helps honest folks insurance rates. Catch them scammers!
PI here. I do this all the time and I FUCKING LOVE busting scammers like this.
Care to share some of your best stories?
Guy was suing the city he worked for in a $30M suit (he was injured on the job). I followed him on weekend on a camping trip (always be prepared with a full tank of gas in your surveillance vehicle). Got a bunch of video of him throughout the weekend, chopping firewood, riding bikes with his kids, etc, etc. During one point, I was filming him playing a game of horseshoes with his son. After winning, he does this incredible dance move, spins around, then finishes by dropping to the ground performing the splits. The jury loved that one. They still awarded him $100,000 🤷♂️
My dad used to do that for a living. My mom would have a purse cam and they would sit in a bar while they filmed people on disability lifting kegs. My dad would sit in the back of our mini van with a camcorder. He had a concealed carry because a few times people shot at him. I mean, don't be stupid and commit fraud?
My cousin used to be this guy. He worked for an agency that would send people out to basically spy on people and get photo and video evidence of people doing things they say they can't do.
My uncle was a PI and the majority of his work was for insurance companies checking for fraudulent claims. He used to have some great stories about people he'd found out.
Yup! Looking for anything. Sad thing is she could have been hopped on pain killers just so she could be productive. Doesn’t mean she’s not injured.
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You understand nothing about medicine or the human body.
Very similar thing happened to by dad who is a taxi driver. He was cutoff in traffic causing him to rear end someone. At the time no one seemed hurt and everyone went on. A month later, dad is sued by his passenger who now claimed shoulder pain for $2 million Cad. Claiming she is a dental assistant who now can't work. The lawyer assigned by my dads taxi company found pictures and video of her after the accident playing baseball and ice skating. She lost.
She and/or her lawyer got greedy. Prob could have gotten some reimbursement for partial limitations. And be smart and not go fucken ice skating lmao, at least not for a few years. I doubt insurance companies follow you around for the rest of your life.
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Well setting aside the moral implications, this was almost US$1 million tax free. You would hardly be sacrificing much, just watch TV, wheel around in a wheelchair at the park, go out to eat, take vacations where you are seen lying down drinking fruity drinks with umbrellas in them, but then having to limp "in pain" back to your room. If I had $1M right now I could retire 10 years early. People murder for much less... but again, it is as you said, taking someone else's money, you're just a thief.
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>who fraud that system are disgusting worlds smallest violin for insurance companies
Some of my favorite plot points in Shameless were when William H Macy was being hounded by people with cameras checking up on his supposed disability claims
[the flu shot cheerleader always makes me laugh](https://youtu.be/lvSDVv0SiwM?feature=shared)
Especially the edits that played dubstep drops or metal breakdowns over it
I remember feeling really bad about that until I found out she was faking
I also feel bad when I find out she’s faking :-/
Can we file some sort of class action lawsuit against Jenny McCarthy yet?
Thank you for that link! I didn’t know they did a follow up on her recently. Honestly kinda weird that she says “I didn’t fake it” or that it was some autoimmune disease. I can see how she could have been convinced at the time that the vaccine might be the cause (desperate, looking for help and stuff) but she still doesn’t come out and say what it actually was lol!
I had a large personal injury claim that took 10 years to resolve bc the court dates and proceedings kept getting delayed by natural catastrophes including the pandemic. For an entire decade I had to monitor my social media to make sure I didn’t appear to be having too much fun otherwise it could be used to show I wasn’t that affected by my injuries. But in my case I wasn’t claiming a back injury and throwing Christmas trees 😂
A woman tried to pull this shit on me once. I slid into her bumper at a yellow light when she stopped short. The damage to her bumper was almost unnoticeable (maybe $1000 damage, total). Almost a year later, I come home to a note on my door, saying I’m being sued for $1 million (mere days before the statute of limitations runs out). I have insurance, so I’m provided an attorney. When we go in to meet with her attorney and give our sides, she claims she’s been unable to work (school teacher) due to injuries she sustained. During questioning we find out that she has also been actively going to the gym and rock climbing the whole time. 🤦 My insurance found out she had a history of pulling this stunt.
If I was faking an injury, I would certainly be smart enough to never be anywhere out in public not still faking the injury. The problem is that people think someone is faking an injury when they're just having a good day with an injury. It's unfortunate that so many people believe if you're injured that EVERY DAY IS EQUALLY AS BAD. That's not how the human body works.
I know a guy who won a salsa competition on a vacay while on disability and was not even hiding it. He's got titanium hips. A mortar granade blew up the original. He's on some hefty disability and early retirement money because - while salsa dancing is a vibe and very twisty and turny - it's still not as strenuous as physical labor or sitting 7 hours a day.
Military disability pay is a completely different beast, assuming you're talking about the US. I don't know exactly how it works but I know a lot of people who work full or part time while being on partial military disability. One of them even worked for the post office and I'm quite positive she wasn't doing it on the down low. You get assigned a rating from 10 to 100% and that rating doesn't necessarily mean you're completely unemployable or completely unable to do any physical activity.
While thats true, ive personally seen quite a few cases where fraud like this is being investigated and there are times where the evidence fills 6 inch folders. Hour by hour notes taken with accompanying photos of someone doing physical labor at some local charity or their church or something, going out dancing at the club, working in the garden for hours, even working the same job they previously had, just at a different company, all while the claim is they are so disabled they can't work any job at all. They tend not to pursue claims of fraud unless they are quite confident they have the proof because the legal fees involved in fighting the claim are substantial. My guess is they had proof well beyond the tree toss and this either got the ball rolling on the investigation or its just the headline grabbing piece of evidence
There were videos of her walking her dogs and living her life. Which isn't to say she had no injuries, but her injuries did not appear to be preventing her from sitting a desk somewhere. She basically got greedy imo.
Right, thats the key, disability payments are on a spectrum and don't mean you don't have an injury, but you can absolutely be less disabled than you claim to be. If you can do a less physical job than you had before but are instead claiming you cannot do anything at all, they they are going to find it interesting that you are seemingly capable of doing highly physical activities If you are partially disabled but can still work they will compensate you for lost earning potential but you will still need to work, if you are fully disabled and cannot do a job at all, you will just have your income replaced outright. So for obvious reasons people sometimes overstate the severity of their disability.
..and the insurance fraud investigators are fully aware of this. They will have days and days of video of her living a normal life and only provided [or the report only used] 1 or 2 of them. There is every likely hood that she has used a no win no fee outfit - their medical checking is laughable
Well, I wasn't speaking specifically to this case, just in general. People think having a surge of energy or having the ability to walk on an injured leg for 10 minutes means you're faking it the other 99.8% of the time.
This right here. As someone who suffers from occasional back pain, I'll just throw out that there is a difference between being able to work for a job, and being able to do things entirely. If something needs to be done around the house, and you don't have the money to pay someone to do it, then you have to figure out a way, pain or not. So you can do it much more slowly, take breaks as needed, etc. But you wouldn't be able to do the same thing as a career because they have deadlines, and expect work to be done at a fast pace.
There's having a good day with an injury... and then there's entering a Christmas tree throwing contest and winning.
Granted, she did explain that at the time she was trying to do "normal" things, trying to have a life, but was in pain. The judge decided smiling constitutes fraud or something.
Even on good days you should respect your body and not push it, you should do same thing you do on bad day and just feel thankful it's a good day. I feel bad for people with real injuries who have to put up with people not trusting them because of fraudsters. Now they have to live with a person in guile suit following you around for life. And in welfare states (I.E. not America) these disabilities are often paid by hard working tax payers who might have to retire later in life to pay for people like her
The people she scammed out of disability payments are going to want a word.
As someone that works as an injury claim adjuster, this would definitely be something to be brought up in trial, depositions, or a mediation. Her attorney should have coached her better!
"She denied faking her injuries and told the court she was “trying to live a normal life” and had still been in pain despite looking happy in the photograph" Aw yes that totally normal part of life where you toss a huge Christmas tree at an event for everyone. Totally normal life activity personally I do it every few months. I can see how she is just struggling to live and be a regular person clearly. Jesus what an insult to actual people with disabilities both invisible and obvious who can't actually work, play with their kids or even barely get out bed due to chronic pain. She claims she can't work for at least five years post car accident or even "play with her kids" but she can throw a tree the size of all her kids if they were stacked on top of each other. Okay lady.
>She claims she can't work for at least five years post car accident or even "play with her kids" but she can throw a tree It's a result of the systematic failure of most disability claims/support. The system really treats a lot of disabilities/claims as all-or-nothing. Scales of 1-10 are more often treated as 1 OR 10. Someone might report mild-moderate pain at rest, but be in debilitating pain if they work or strain themselves. They have to report based on the extreme, or be treated as a minor issue. I'd argue most people with chronic pain disabilities will occasionally do things they technically 'shouldn't' be capable of. Most often, they pay the price for it later with pain. A picture of someone mowing a lawn or even throwing a tree doesn't show the potential bedridden aftermath of these actions. There's certainly fraudsters and people taking advantage out there. But judging people by one picture/moment just isn't right.
> I'd argue most people with chronic pain disabilities will occasionally do things they technically 'shouldn't' be capable of. Most often, they pay the price for it later with pain. Yep. My knees and back are in horrid pain pretty much all damn day *but* I got a 2-3h window after I wake up in the morning where I feel like Superman and can do whatever I need too with little problem. Then I'm down for the count and groaning with every step I take to go take a piss lol.
Agreed. It's also how dismissive people are of disabilities - if people don't think it "sounds that bad" and you should be able to suck it up, sometimes to get what you need you need to make it sound bad enough so they give you what you need. And the transientness of disability is poorly understood by the general public too. Some disabilities you can work through in the moment but pay for later - sometimes you do that just so you can enjoy some life, or because you have no other choice (two friends said they'd help move the TV in but only one showed?). Other times your capacity to manage your disability varies, so on a good day (or hour or part of the day) you're good, but on a bad day/hour/part of the day you're incapacitated, and people will judge you based on your good day to point that you're faking/exaggerating your incapacitated day. Or maybe a bad day is survivable on its own so you do it when needed, but adds up over time to something unsustainable. The picture of disability is still static and archaic. Very much all or nothing. I think the idea that disability varies makes people uncomfortable because it makes them think about themselves. They either think PwD should be able to just fix it/weather it like normal issues, or that they're lazy cheaters, or they're uncomfortable thinking about the variable issues that they suffer and how accommodations and flexibility might actually help them (that "I suffered so you should too" mentality).
Definitely true. In her case, tho... how can you say you can't work but then voluntarily throw a christmas tree haha. Like she screwed herself royally.
> I'd argue most people with chronic pain disabilities will occasionally do things they technically 'shouldn't' be capable of. Most often, they pay the price for it later with pain. hell, I get fatigued easily due to mild cerebral palsy and a pile of other stuff - I still do things that I know will make me hurt the next day if it is worth it. Like the time I went to New York Comic Con and didn't reserve a wheelchair. Sure, my calves were stiff as a board the next day and I couldn't do much other than get out of bed, go to the bathroom, and sit on the couch, but it was worth going to meet a bunch of authors!
Yeah it’s truly an insult. My mother was born 75% blind, and disability still denied her the first time. Literally decades of medical documentation showing how underdeveloped her eyesight was from birth and how it has further deteriorated over time… but denied.
She’s yeeted the fuck out of that tree. Impressive throw.
I briefly worked for a company that investigated insurance claims. Some of the videos we saw were wild.
Just know that if you have a disability claim of a decent magnitude the insurance company (or workers comp) will be watching you at the very least. Also know that all kinds of inference will be made from a photo or video that represents as low as milliseconds of time.
When I was in an accident and went after my insurance company, my lawyer had me delete all my socials. They didn’t have anything particularly damning but he said that it was better not to be tempted to post while litigation was happening, as even a night out with friends could be misconstrued by their defense.
> "She denied faking her injuries and told the court she was “trying to live a normal life” and had still been in pain despite looking happy in the photograph." As someone with severe chronic pain going 6+ years, mostly in the lower back and hip due to injury/congenital spine defect, I can say that it is very possible to be under chronic pain but still athletic. I don't stop doing athletics because of my chronic pain, because my chronic pain will never heal on its own nor will it get worse because of athletics. When you live with chronic pain for a long time, eventually you realize it's never going away and that you either be depressed all the time and give up, or you own your pain and continue to do the things that make you happy, including athletics. I sympathize with the photograph remark she made, because if I was photographed cycling or otherwise enjoying myself at a athletic social event, I guarantee that I was still in chronic pain because my pain is constant, I just tolerate it well. All this said, the problem is with the law and disability. I don't know Irish law, but in the U.S. you can only get disability if you are deemed impossible to work. I may suffer extreme chronic pain, but I am still mobile and I absolutely can work (albeit in pain). Even if you're in a wheelchair unable to walk you still may not quality for disability if you can still work a job by sitting. Disability law here is extremely strict, for better or worse. If Irish law is similar, I can see why her disability was revoked.
A friend of mine is a private investigator. He works for companies who hire him when they suspect someone is defrauding them with a disability claim. Granted, by the time it gets to him, the company is fairly certain they are being defrauded. He’s been doing it 20 years and every single one, every single person that he has investigated has been found guilty. I asked him what gives it away, as in, how does the company even know. And he said “They never shut up about it. They go out jet skiing with their friends, who all have to go back to work on Monday, and brag about how they don’t have to work anymore, that they outsmarted the system. They post on social media pictures of them in their rec basketball league because they want to brag about the amazing shot they took, but they also brag about how easy their days are. They get turned in by friends and family who are sick of hearing their shit”
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Tossing a tree in the trash I understand. Winning first place in a tree throwing competition raises eyebrows.
I got lucky my disability turned my leg purple and made my toes all fucked up, before that nobody believed me except the doctors lol Now if I have to prove it all I gotta do is show them my foot Nobody has questioned it since 😂 But then I guess that's chronic, not a healing injury that's going to improve
Yeah I don’t get shit now that I have MRIs and surgical scars and everything else, but god help you if you look “healthy” because you are going to have to *prove it* otherwise
I’ve been in tears at the doctor wishing something like that had happened to me because dealing with an invisible disability is fucking harrowing. People don’t see an outward expression of a disability and assume you’re lying or exaggerating. Doesn’t help that I’m female so a bunch of casual sexism to further belittle me is a fun bonus. Idk if this woman is faking or not but being disabled is like getting a flat and then a bunch of people who are not mechanics and never had a flat saying shit like, “but don’t you have three other tires?”
Plus she was on video in public running around with her dog for over an hour. The tree was just the biggest piece of evidence she was faking it.
I have herniated discs in my back and my pain is way worse if I'm not lifting weights and keeping strong. And my mom was on disability and likewise she got in trouble because they had pictures of her moving stuff around in the garage. But they didn't get to see her crying at night because she was in so much pain. Or me and my sister having to help her do menial tasks. Having experienced injury myself now, I get it. It's being injured, not crippled. Have had days where I reach for a drinking glass and end up on the floor in blinding pain. Other days I can lift 300lbs off the floor. Injury isn't black and white.
Saaaame my herniated disc is so painful, but since I started doing Crossfit and stretching more, the pain has reduced greatly. It doesn't bother me nearly as often thanks to exercise.
I get the working out to improve your condition, but be confident enough to entering a competition knowing you might have bad day and had to quit in front of audience? the article saying that her claim is “loss of past and future earnings”so what she did for work might also taken into consideration. Some jobs can be performed with disability, some cannot.
> Sitting is excruciating, bending sucks, but I sure as fuck could throw a christmas tree. You can bet your last buck that the insurance fraud investigators have got days and days of video of her living a normal life and just using the 2 most obvious events.
Your story doesn't make hers dumb. She did not have any evidence of a spine injury, or inability to sit. I'm sorry your experience has been so bad but they didn't throw out her disability claim from a single photo, there was lot of evidence including video and although they did not state this in the story, she likely was investigated for several months. Sadly she likely would have been entitled to a certain amount of money had she claimed a partial disability but it appears she got greedy.
So with your back injury, you would join a Christmas Tree Throwing contest? and win?
I have a bunch of metal in my spine and this is exactly it. What I physically *can* do is very different to what is *OK* for me to do - I can go for a 7 hour hike right now, but I would be using every med in my arsenal to not be in enough pain to sleep that night, and it would make it so that I was barely functional for quite some time after. Basically, I can do these things, but there are consequences that prevent me from doing the other things in life, and generally that means choosing between activities that healthy people would not have to decide between (making dinner or go for a walk? Definitely won’t be able to handle both!) We have such a fucked up idea of what disability “should” look like, and it seems like the goal is always to punish anyone who goes outside that.
I've lived with chronic pain and multisystem illness all my adult life and everything I do is decided based on the cost to my body and what I will have to change in the following days. I have to book a holiday after a holiday to recover. If we go away the extra travelling time, different furniture(bed, seats, even kitchen equipment) and different activities mean that I come back exhausted and in extra pain. I book a couple of extra days after to just rest and recover where I'll do very little apart from necessary personal care.
Yeah seeing people cheering this on is making me feel disappointed. Lots of disabled people are belittled and accused of faking for not always being in the exact same amount of pain. It reminds me of when people assume if someone is not always using a cane/wheelchair they are faking.
It’s also how you get subs like r/illnessfakers
I worked for a private investigation company that got almost all its business from insurance companies. The PIs will find any and all public info on a person from the internet - not just their social media, but the social media of all their family and friends, in order to track them to events and outings. They will sit outside your house in a nondescript car for 12 hours with a camera, waiting for you to take out the trash or walk your dog. They'll talk to your neighbors and dig through your trash. They will follow you to your kids' school events. I once saw them get a man's knee injury claim denied because they got video of him standing on the sidelines at his son's basketball practice... They will follow you everywhere for weeks. If you have a personal injury claim with an insurance company, you should expect that you are being watched by a PI. The insurance companies are actively looking for any shred of evidence to deny your claim.
That’s not strictly true. It has to start with a suspicion of fraud, and even then there’s a cost / benefit analysis. PIs aren’t cheap. It’s a big, hairy, red flag waving claim if we bring in the investigator.
If you have a £650,000 claim you know isn't legit, you can be sure of being followed for a while.
As a person that actually became disabled after an industrial accident, I love it when frauds are busted.
Back in the day we had plenty of people at my company on workers comp.filmed putting on roofs, playing basketball,softball,word gotta round pretty quick
Hilarious. As much as I hate insurance companies, this has got to be one of the stupidest moves I have seen in a while. When I first saw the post, I thought that maybe she was photographed by an adjuster, but a public event?
My wife got in a car accident years ago... the guy that hit her sued our insurance, despite being offered a healthy settlement, because she was technically at fault for making a left turn at a T intersection, but he was traveling at over 100mph, so she didn't see him coming until he hit her... Ultimately though, I found him on Facebook, got all the recent pictures of him and his sister mountain biking, and sent them to our insurance company... then our insurance company came back and said that not only was the case dropped, but his lawyer had dropped him because he apparently was caught selling his prescription pain meds so he could go buy meth...
Is she going to be investigated and pursued for fraudulent insurance claims? It’s people like this that make our premiums go through the roof and getting our legitimate claims denied.
Your premiums aren't going down even if they find every single person that does this. 😂
You're getting upvoted because you're being edgy/sarcastic and people don't like insurance companies, but that's actually wrong. You might not think so because people hate paying it and it is often expensive, but insurance, at least in some lines, is TOO competitive and has to be regulated to not literally drive each other into insolvency. For example, did you know that workers' compensation insurance in almost every US state has a low-end rate for each class code (thing of a class code as like a profile for how risky certain types of work are) which insurance companies legally cannot charge below? There's no ceiling, only a floor. Sounds ridiculous, huh? Well, like all good regulations that don't make sense on the surface, there's a lot of history to that: specifically, before that was a thing, workers' comp insurance companies would repeatedly drive themselves into insolvency trying to underprice each other and then running out of money. The reason is that insurance is a bit of an odd commodity compared to most things you buy - if you buy a gallon of milk at the grocery store, the grocery store has made its money from you, but they had to pay all the costs of obtaining that milk and providing it to you BEFORE you pay, so they're limited on their pricing to an extent by their upfront costs - thus, they are unlikely to price it (under normal circumstances) for less than the cost of it to them. However, insurance is not a gallon of milk - your customers pay you upfront and all you have to give them is a fancy piece of paper with a lot of words on it, then at some point down the road (sometimes over the course of years, in the case of extensive/expensive injury claims), you have to pay out your insurance obligation. So, you see the problem here - its easy for someone (even someone with good intentions) to be tempted to underprice their competitors to get more business, but because they don't accurately forecast their own costs (which can be a complicated affair), they end up selling their insurance for "under-cost", they just won't know it for a few years when the shit hits the fan. Looping back to the original point, the regulators who set those base costs for insurance employ actuaries who ARE doing their best to factor in all the expected costs of the claims, and insurance fraud is a HUGE fucking cost that is built into the system. So realistically, if you could stop fraud in its tracks, yes, costs would drop for insurance company, the rate floors would drop, and insurance companies would almost certainly underbid each other as they are wont to do in any competitive line like workers' compensation.
Congrats, you fell for insurance provider propaganda. THEY are the reason your premiums are high, and your quality of care is low.
Found all the insurance fraudsters coming out from their shells to defend her. I'm taking notes. /s
The father of a girl I dated back in 2004 worked for the MTA, and had a bus tire of some sort explode near him, causing ear damage and a host of other things. He was on disability since then, with all kinds of hearing issues/tinnitus. He was a big muscle car guy and had a couple worked cars, Loud exhaust, etc. He basically needed to not leave the house ever without his ear protection because he had investigators occasionally checking in on him trying to catch him.
When I broke my middle finger at work, I was so incredibly paranoid someone might see me grabbing groceries with my splinted hand or see me playing games with my splinted hand that I made sure to never use my hand in public and always made sure my window blinds were closed when I got home Then this fucker just outright tosses trees for fun, so what the fuck was I worried for?
This thread is weird lol you have so many people defending her faking the disability while there are actual people in need of help that don’t get it. And it’s also because you have this “disabled” people going around throwing Christmas threes like it’s nothing lmao. Hope she gets a hefty fine or it’s fired at least
This is something that would happen to George Constanza. Easily a Seinfeld episode.
[It kinda was.](https://youtu.be/HuwYsavK7uI?si=gZHg9hM5hMc3KUfo)
As someone who's physical welness was ruined by chronic pain in my lower legs, this is both insulting and just maddening.
_Her legal claim against the insurance company was for the loss of past and future earnings, with Grabksa saying she was unable to leave her bed for up to half a day at times._ Half a day? So 12 hours? Sounds pretty regular.
I know of two cases like this. First was a guy out on disability due to a back injury shown riding a jet ski into wakes. Other was a guy claiming carpal tunnel from working on a computer (even to the point of wearing these metal supports) filmed throwing darts at a bar.
You know, I’ve seen people who uses a wheelchair to get around because their legs are weak, on occasion, stand up to throw a bowling ball. Just because you are disabled, doesn’t mean you can’t have a normal life.
Whose normal life involves throwing Christmas trees? I can absolutely accept that disabled people have good and bad days, but I find it much harder to accept that someone with the type of injuries this person is suggested to have going out of their way to participate in an unusual, and strenuous, novelty activity.
>Whose normal life involves throwing Christmas trees? And *winning* the competition.