Fraud Cost Us All

A record 10,988,269 people received federal disability benefits in December 2013 and according to report from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) more than 25 percent of benefits are awarded with “insufficient, contradictory, and incomplete evidence.”

Last week a “blind” man in Wisconsin was sentenced to one year in prison for defrauding the Social Security Administration after pretending to be blind in order to get disability benefits.

The fraud scheme ended when federal agents caught him driving a speedboat, according to the inspector general.

Surveillance video shows 'blind' man driving to, from Social Security office.

The man sentenced had collected $115,000 in unlawful Medicare benefits and evaded $178,000 in taxes between 2004 and 2009 in addition to $175,000 in disability payments. Fraud and abuse of the disability system and in the area of injured worker compensation plans are serious problems, which need additional attention of not only the legal system but of employers as well. It has become far too easy to “work the system” rather than do an honest day’s work.