A 30-year-old San Jose man has been charged with felony Workers’ Compensation Fraud after a District Attorney’s Office investigation showed that he was untruthful about a major back injury.
Despite telling doctors that he was in constant excruciating pain and only able to lift a maximum of eight pounds, Ricardo Casillas was videotaped doing manual automotive work and lifting tires. The tires weighed between 50 and 65 pounds each. He was recently arrested and is expected to be arraigned April 24.
Casillas faces a maximum of five years and four months if convicted of making false or fraudulent material statement to an insurance company and attempted perjury. He would also be ordered to pay full restitution.
The Workers’ Compensation system is designed to provide medical coverage when a worker is injured. If the injured worker is not truthful about how the injury occurred, their pain level or abilities to the medical professional, then the injured worker may receive treatment that is not needed or compensation they are not entitled to. This, in turn, increases costs for everyone.
“The Workers’ Compensation system is set up to compensate injured workers while they recuperate from their injuries,” Deputy District Attorney Denise Raabe said. “But when an injured worker lies about the extent of their injury or their physical abilities as they recover, they are cheating the system.”
It is alleged that Casillas filed a Workers’ Compensation claim for a 2010 back injury. Despite complaining that he was still in excruciating pain and could not lift anything heavy, surveillance video taken in 2012 showed otherwise. After leaving his doctor’s office, Casillas is later seen in a video doing manual labor on his car, including jumping on a wrench to tighten lug nuts. The video shows no evidence that Casillas was limited in his movements or in any pain.
