Montgomery County will take a former county police officer to civil court on charges she committed workers’ compensation fraud by lying about an injury to improperly draw disability benefits paid by county taxpayers.
The county is accusing former police officer Valerie Willis of misleading the county about what caused her bum knee. County officials said Willis didn’t tell the county when she applied for workers’ compensation that she’d “hopped off” a pickup truck one New Year’s Eve and twisted her knee while off duty. That injury came after injuring her knee twice on the job.
“She deliberately hid that evidence from the county,” said Wendy Karpel, an associate county attorney.
Willis’ lawyer declined to comment about the case.
The county tried to convince the state Workers’ Compensation Commission to order an investigation into the alleged fraud, but the commission refused. When the county tried to appeal that decision to the circuit court, the judge said he didn’t have the jurisdiction to hear the care.
Wrong, said the state Court of Special Appeals, in a decision last week that ordered the circuit court to hear the case.
County officials said the commission has no appetite to pursue fraud cases and point to fact that it only referred 10 cases out of 24,000 claims to fraud investigators in fiscal year 2008.
“It’s a breakdown of the system,” said Terry Fleming, head of the county’s risk management division.
The county paid out more than $16.5 million during the last fiscal year in worker’s compensation payment and county officials want lawmakers in Annapolis to keep a closer eye on the commission’s “stance on fraud.”
The county is taking aggressive steps on its own to catch fraud. The Examiner first reported that the county had hired a private investigator to videotape an employee they said was faking an injury.
The investigator recorded the employee, who had not been at her desk job for several weeks because she said she was in too much pain, taking a tour of Luray Caverns and having a picnic, court records show.
Despite the taped evidence the commission awarded that employee a workers’ compensation award, but a county jury needed only 20 minutes to deliberate before reversing that decision, officials said.
