Investigative Case Highlights

If you keep up with our Investigative Case Highlights , you know people who defraud the workers’ compensation program go out of their way to keep their schemes secret. We previously wrote about a case where a postal employee milked an alleged ankle injury for over 14 years while gainfully employed, and another where our special agents caught an employee dancing the night away while claiming an injury had left him totally disabled. This health care claimant investigation, however, may well take...

Some of our fraud investigations find perpetrators who are fueled by sheer greed, but others sometimes uncover different motives. Our special agents started a case after Postal Service management alerted them of suspicious transactions on agency-issued credit cards used for fueling postal vehicles (also known as Voyager cards). At the onset, it seemed two postal employees were making fuel charges in excess, so our investigators collected evidence and launched a detailed analysis of the charges.

Everybody loves free stuff, right? But what if it’s medical supplies you didn’t ask for and don’t actually need? And what if a company keeps sending you stuff after you ask it to stop? Oh — one little detail: it’s not free and you’re left footing part of the bill. That’s what fueled a health care fraud investigation back in 2015. It started when two insurance carriers filed complaints with a federal watchdog, alleging a medical equipment company was inappropriately billing patients

By the time her boyfriend planted the idea, she’d worked at the Postal Service long enough to know exactly what envelopes to look for. She showed up to work each day playing the part so well, no one suspected a thing. But in just a few months, she managed to steal more than $24 million in checks, making this the largest mail theft conspiracy in the history of the Western District of North Carolina.

Imagine someone starts a job and less than two months later jumps on a gravy train to ride out a supposed ankle injury on the Postal Service's dime. That’s what one Postal Service employee in Ohio did recently, and it’s one of the reasons the USPS OIG’s work to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse is as vital as ever. A woman joined the Postal Service in June 2020 as a tractor trailer operator, and 54 days later filed a traumatic injury claim with the Department of Labor Office of Workers’