Where’s Aristotle When ABC Needs Him?

April 18th, 2014 by

This morning, ABC’s Good Morning America shone its media arclight on Cathy Caswell as she spun the great big wheel on The Price is Right, not once, but twice. But while doing so Ms. Caswell was drawing $3000 per month in workers comp indemnity payments, according to ABC. And she was collecting those payments because of a shoulder injury, which prevented her from standing, running, reaching or grasping, as reported by ABC’s eagle-eyed Cecilia Vega. Vega “reported” that Caswell was one of “the countless people accused of faking an injury” to the tune of “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The report then cut to some fraud words of wisdom from private eye, “master of disguise” (not my words; they’re Vega’s), Bob Keane who fancies himself cut from the James Bond cloth. Keane claimed that if you’re committing fraud the only way to avoid being caught by him is “by completely staying in your house for three to five years,” because if you venture outside he’s going to “get you.”
By using phrases like “countless people” and “hundreds of millions of dollars” ABC implies that Ms. Caswell is merely the tip of a very big iceberg. Frankly, I think Ms. Vega skipped Philosophy 101 – Aristotelian Logic. You know, the part about faulty inductive arguments going from the particular to the general? But I digress.
We all know that there are people who commit workers comp fraud. In fact, some of them are workers who fake injuries or malinger trying to milk the system. But the fraud committed by workers is dwarfed by that of many others in the system.
Consider Devon Lynn Kile and her husband Michael Petronella. In 2010, while Ms. Kile sought to appear on the Bravo TV series “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” the couple gained a different kind of notoriety when federal authorities, after raided their three roofing businesses as part of a two year probe, charged them with 31 felony counts involving tens of millions of dollars of underreported workers comp premiums. Petronella went to jail for 10 years, and Kile was sentenced to 10 years probation and ordered to make $2.8 million in restitution.
There are many dimensions to fraud in the workers comp system. While many people think of fraud primarily as a problem involving employees, in dollar terms most fraud is committed by other players in the system. There are opportunities for wrong-doing in virtually every financial transaction within a system that generates multiple billions of dollars every year.
Just to be clear, fraud can be committed by, yes, employees, but also by employers (see Devon Kile), attorneys, medical providers, claim adjusters, insurance agents and even investment firms (see the “Coingate” scandal in Ohio).
Despite the many opportunities for fraud in the comp system, outright fraud is relatively rare. The vast majority of transactions within the comp system, involving all of the above players, are carried out with integrity and good faith. Nonetheless, vigilance is always necessary to ensure that comp dollars are spent prudently and wisely.
ABC has scheduled an expanded report on Ms. Caswell, et al, this evening on its World News Tonight program. It should make for some interesting, if infuriating, entertainment, faulty logic and all.