Nurse, DOT Worker Charged With Double Dipping

Tuesday, September 10, 2019 | 0

The New York State Inspector General's office announced the arrest of two people charged with continuing to receive workers' compensation benefits while taking on new jobs.

In northwest New York state, near Niagara Falls, Joshua Newman, of Wilson, was charged last week with grand larceny and defrauding the New York State Insurance Fund of more than $11,000 in benefits.

The office said Newman began receiving benefits in 2017 after he was injured while working for the state Department of Transportation. Newman reported to NYSIF that he had not returned to work, but an investigation allegedly found that he had his own business, Niagara Pole Barn, and was doing other work.

“The defendant’s deliberate deception to unlawfully obtain workers’ compensation benefits is yet another example of wrongdoing that compromises the integrity of an important system to protect the economic stability of truly injured workers,” Inspector General Letizia Tagliafierro said in a bulletin.

Newman is set to appear in court Sept. 26.

In the Bronx, Corrine Tracy, 33, was indicted by a grand jury on 15 charges after she was allegedly found to have kept working while receiving more than $5,600 in benefits.

Tracy, a registered nurse at Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center, was injured in 2018 and began receiving benefits, Tagliafierro said. But from May through August, Tracy kept working at Gracie Square Hospital in New York City. She told a physician that she was not working, and she completed a claimants' history form that indicated she was unable to work, investigators said.

“This defendant used her state employment to greedily enrich herself with benefits to which she was not entitled,” Tagliafierro said in a statement.

Tracy is set for a court appearance on Dec. 3.