A former parking meter reader in Washington state has pleaded guilty to workers compensation fraud after it was discovered that she lived with six dogs, even though she claimed she would faint at the sight of a canine following a workplace dog attack.
The employee, who worked for the Pacific County Public Utility District, claimed she developed post-traumatic stress disorder after a dog bit her on the arm in 2007, according to the Washington Department of Labor & Industries, which announced the guilty plea Wednesday.
During the next several years, the woman claimed she was unable to work because she would pass out at the mere sight of a dog. She collected more than $162,000 in wage-replacement workers compensation benefits between September 2016 and October 2019.
“This is clearly a case of someone abusing the workers’ comp system,” Celeste Monahan, assistant director of L&I’s Fraud Prevention and Labor Standards division, said in a statement.
The woman pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree attempted theft of state workers compensation benefits, and a judge sentenced her to 30 days in jail but permitted the sentence to be carried out at home under electronic monitoring.
L&I started investigating the woman in 2018 after a claim manager suspected fraud.
An inspector went to the home, posing as someone interested in an online sale, and found the woman had dogs “swarming around her – and she didn’t faint or look scared,” according to an L&I statement.