Posted on 03/12/2018 6:58:34 AM PDT by Gamecock
A North Carolina pastor who claimed she had a crippling disease is being sued by her insurer, which says it found church Facebook photos of her going down a slide and playing Skee-Ball.
Cynthia McCullough of Charlotte told her insurer that reflex sympathetic dystrophy left her unable to bathe and dress. She said she needed constant home care, according to the lawsuit filed by New York Life in federal court in Charlotte on Friday. Reflex sympathetic dystrophy is a rare and chronic nervous system disorder that causes severe pain, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders.
McCullough has received about $389,500 from her comprehensive long-term care insurance policy since 2010, the lawsuit said. The insurer wants its money back.
The lawsuit said McCullough was freely moving about, lifting objects into her SUV without problem, when the insurer conducted surveillance on Dec. 30, 2016, and Jan. 1, 2017. She drove about 50 miles to a church in Rutherfordton, where she apparently is a pastor, according to the lawsuit.
A church news listing on Rutherford Weekly.com said McCullough is pastor of St. John AME Zion Church.
Further surveillance over 15 days in 2017 showed her driving to a doctor’s office, a bank, two restaurants and a gas station, where she pumped her own gas, the lawsuit said. Twice again she drove to Rutherfordton to attend church.
When New York Life told her in July 2017 that it was cutting off her payments, McCullough appealed, according to the lawsuit. She claimed her disease was “severe and debilitating.”
McCullough did not return a message from the Observer Friday.
Hey, “Rev”. Ever heard of ‘thou shalt not steal’? Hope they throw her fat ass in prison for insurance fraud.
Plenty of time to train.
A friend worked as a paralegal. A woman came into the office wearing a brace and in a wheelchair, complaining an accident had left her crippled for the last year. While talking to the attorney, my friend checked on Facebook - and printed out the pictures of the woman surfing in Hawaii the previous week.
She handed the pictures to the attorney. He looked at them and asked the lady to take her case to one of his competitors...
“Be sure your sins will find you out!”
A “protected” person.
Auditing her case is racist.
Heck, I’ll bet she votes. Many times.
>>You can be sure her honest co-religionists are disgusted by her fraudulent behavior. You can be pretty darn sure, I think, that they won’t offer to help her pcy back the money.<<
As of a few minutes ago, nothing on their fb page yet one way or the other.
My auto insurance agent told me they had a client that was claiming passenger car insurance rates throught them. They checked the guys facebook page and saw he was running the car at the local drag strip.
It is a costly process, but the savings overall might be worth the cost.
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Some people will be easy to catch. The low lying fruit, so to speak. Social media searches would be a realtively easy and cost effective way to reveal some flagrant cheaters. Other more crafty people would be far more difficult to expose.
I guess the point is that if governments made it known that they are looking for recipients of fraudulent disability payments then that alone could help to reduce the cheating somewhat. Such a program would have to be aggressive and expansive (i.e., include Medicaid fraud) to have an impact. The cost savings could be enormous.
In high school, I read a hilarious quote by Dr. Samuel Johnson and it stuck in my mind, and has gotten me into a bit of trouble more than once:
Seeing a woman preach is like watching a dog walk on its hind legs. You are not surprised he can’t do it well, you are surprised he can do it at all.
Fraud detection is one of the drivers of AI image analysis. It would not only detect potential fraud from a single picture or video, but could quickly cross reference all categorized images and videos to determine a historical pattern of abuse or possibly the identification or conspirators in multiple cases.
If Big Brother is not watching now he will be shortly.
In the insurance business, it is an old saw that its teachers and preachers that are the root of most insurance fraud.
In the insurance business, it is an old saw that its teachers and preachers that are the root of most insurance fraud.
An elderly friend at church recently told me that horseback riding helped his back pain. I can't think why he'd lie, in a casual conversation about my 6-year-old's riding lessons, so I assume it's true.
Being repeated thousands of times around the country daily.
Around these parts, “disabled” people have plenty of time to spend fishing and camping. They always have a great tan. Bless their hearts.
Agree. Ever count the number of handicapped parking spaces at a golf course?
Insurance Companies should write “unannounced inspections” clauses into settlements then hire and train responsible veterans to do these inspections. That would drop premiums for sure.
Very interesting. I suppose financial records could also be searched for spending patterns that are inconsistent with an income presumably derived mainly from disability payments. Credit card companies already monitor spending to look for purchases of uncharacteristic items and at places that do not fit in with our historical patterns of card usage.
And AI will become much more sophisticated in the near future. The technology will soon be reaching critical mass and will have a big impact on our lives in many ways. Some good, and some not so good.
A former pastor at my former church once went off and raged and attempted to humiliate a former member there, over a disagreement the 2 had.
I was on the council and during our deliberation, the Pastor built a team of supporters including a therapist. The Pastor suddenly was diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. This was the reason he didn’t act appropriately.
Well, the majority of the council did not believe it. It divided the church. My family ended up leaving. 1 person who is not truly called can destroy a people.
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