{"id":440,"date":"2012-12-17T10:06:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T10:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/?p=440"},"modified":"2015-04-28T12:26:16","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T12:26:16","slug":"injured-worker-fraud-not-prevalent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/2012\/12\/articles\/fraud\/injured-worker-fraud-not-prevalent\/","title":{"rendered":"Injured Worker Fraud Not Prevalent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend today asked me about about an article in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasvegassun.com\/news\/2012\/dec\/14\/metro-traffic-officer-arrested-charges-related-wor\/\">Las Vegas Sun <\/a>today regarding a Metro office who was caught doing something stupid and is being prosecuted for theft related to his workers&#8217; compensation case.&nbsp; The Nevada Attorney General is responsible under Nevada law for investigating and prosecuting any injured workers an insurer or self-insured employer believes is obtaining medical or compensation benefits fraudulently.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t represent the officer who is charged, and I don&#8217;t know exact&nbsp;circumstances of his case.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The problem with the short article is that while it may be factual, it helps perpetuate the myth that workers&#8217; compensation fraud by injured workers is prevalent.&nbsp; It isn&#8217;t.&nbsp;&nbsp; Metro officers in particular are not the type of&nbsp;people who file fraudulent claims.&nbsp; Obviously, police officers get hurt a lot.&nbsp;Their jobs are&nbsp;physical.&nbsp; The interact&nbsp;with violent &nbsp;criminals, &nbsp;and they are&nbsp;on bikes,&nbsp;motorcycles&nbsp;and&nbsp;in patrol cars.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The officer mention in the article&nbsp;is the only Metro officer currently under prosecution for workers&#8217; compensation fraud.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Previously,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nevadaworkerscompensationlaw.com\/admin\/app?__mode=view&amp;_type=entry&amp;id=339545&amp;blog_id=795\">&nbsp;I wrote <\/a>that&nbsp;only 93 cases were &nbsp;referred to the Attorney General&#8217;s Office in 2011 out of the approximately 50,000 claims that were filed in Nevada.&nbsp; (The DIR did not have the exact &nbsp;2011 statistics available.)&nbsp; I just spoke with an experienced claims adjuster, who I knew when I was the Chief Attorney for the Southern Regional Office of the SIIS.&nbsp; He said that he has only referred three claimants to the AG&#8217;s office in twenty years.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>My point is that if you happen to know an officer who is recuperating from a work injury or occupational illness, thank him or her for their service, and wish them a speedy recovery.&nbsp; These officers aren&#8217;t faking it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend today asked me about about an article in the Las Vegas Sun today regarding a Metro office who was caught doing something stupid and is being prosecuted for theft related to his workers&#8217; compensation case.&nbsp; The Nevada Attorney General is responsible under Nevada law for investigating and prosecuting any injured workers an insurer &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/2012\/12\/articles\/fraud\/injured-worker-fraud-not-prevalent\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Injured Worker Fraud Not Prevalent<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[237,356,384],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fraud","tag-fraud","tag-officer","tag-police"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhwlawoffice.com\/nevada-workers-comp-law-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}