Yukon WCB finds $2M in bogus claims

A fraud investigator with the Yukon Workers' Compensation Health and Safety Boardhired last year discovered six former workers who had illegally collected millions of dollars in payments, executives say.

Presenting the compensation board's 2007 year-end report on Tuesday, president Valerie Royle said its lone fraud investigator, since being hired in July 2007, has saved the board at least $2 million in bogus injury claims.

In most cases, the illegal claimants were living outside the Yukon. They had recovered from their workplace injuries but were not being honest with their medical providers, meaning they kept collecting compensation.

Royle said among the six claimants caught to date is a man who was heard bragging in a bar.

"What he had told his doctors was he couldn't lift a carton of milk; he couldn't open a door. And [he] was running a heavy-equipment business, actually, himself," Royle said Tuesday.

Another man, she said, claimed he could not work, but was renting himself out to sports teams: "Somebody who was totally disabled was playing difficult sports positions like goalie or backcatcher or fielder," she said.

The board has not given further details on the allegations of fraud.

Royle said the undercover investigator, who enforces the Yukon Workers' Compensation Act, currently has more cases of alleged fraudinvolving compensation of another $2 million.

"He plans to finish those within the next 12-month period," she said.

"We will not tolerate abuse of the compensation system."

The money saved on recovered illegal claims has been good news for the compensation board, which reported a record high 2,023 workplace injuries in the Yukon in 2007.

"The good news out of that, though, is there was only one death in the Yukon workplace," board chair Craig Tuton said.

But for the first time, the board reduced its costs of looking after injury claims, thanks to new procedures for injured workers.

The board's investment revenue was also down by more than $18 million last year, board executives reported.