According to Claims Journal and New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal of the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor, Wanda Berry of Hudson County, NJ has been indicted on charges of second-degree insurance fraud and third-degree theft by deception late last month in connection to fraudulently stealing over $46,000 in her dead mother’s workers’ compensation benefits. Berry allegedly collected the payments for approximately three years after the passing of her mother.
The state grand jury identified that Berry’s mother had passed in November 2014, and Berry took it upon herself to claim to insurers that her mother was indeed alive, in order to collect her $1,400 monthly check.
According to the indictment, in 2015, Berry claimed that her mother was alive but under a doctor’s care in a nursing home. Furthermore, in 2016, Berry provided insurers a fraudulent doctor’s note indicating that her mother was still alive, but now in hospice care.
Berry is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but with the second-degree charges, faces five to ten years in state prison and a fine of up to $150,000, and with third-degree charges, faces three to five years in state prison and up to a $15,000 fine.