CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — A federal jury convicted former postal worker Luann Middleton on September 11 of wire fraud after prosecutors showed she collected more than $900,000 in disability benefits while repeatedly submitting false claims about her physical limitations.
Middleton, 72, of Glen Cove, faces up to 20 years in prison and financial penalties. The verdict followed a four-day trial before U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Videos contradicted claims of total disability
Medical evaluations submitted on Middleton’s behalf claimed she could not sit, stand, walk, bend, lift or reach above her shoulders for any amount of time. The records described back pain so severe that she could not participate in physical activities or return to work.
Investigators documented a different picture between October 2015 and March 2022. Prosecutors said Middleton cleaned out a garage, sat through a movie lasting more than two hours, stood for more than an hour at a cookie-decorating class, climbed stairs and went shopping.
Surveillance footage also captured her carrying groceries and laundry bags, bending to pick things up from the floor and reaching for objects at heights she claimed she could not reach. In one instance, she hoisted a bag of potting soil from the bottom of a shopping cart into her vehicle.
Payments began after a 1997 back injury claim
Middleton reported injuring her lower back while working as a postal clerk in August 1997, when she was in her mid-40s. She began receiving federal workers’ compensation benefits about three months later.
A doctor subsequently found she could work, and Middleton briefly returned to limited duty in February 1999. She then claimed her back injury had returned and left her totally and permanently disabled.
The payments resumed at roughly two-thirds of her annual salary, tax-free. Between November 1997 and September 2022, she regularly submitted medical evaluations and records to the Postal Service and Department of Labor asserting that she remained unable to work.
Prosecutors said she collected approximately $40,000 annually for nearly 25 years. Postal Service and Labor Department records put the fraudulent payments at more than $900,000.
Federal investigators pursued the benefits fraud
“For more than 20 years and until her lies caught up to her, the defendant refused to come to work and instead collected tax-free disability benefits for a highly-exaggerated injury,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said.
Matthew M. Modafferi, special agent in charge of the USPS Office of Inspector General’s Northeast Area Field Office, announced the verdict with Nocella. He credited federal prosecutors and the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General for their work on the case.
“These benefits are intended to support U.S. Postal Service employees who are truly injured, not those who misrepresent their condition for personal gain,” Modafferi said.
The Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General investigates false employee claims as well as fraudulent billing by medical providers under the federal workers’ compensation program. The Department of Labor administers the program, which provides medical care and wage compensation for qualifying work-related injuries and illnesses.
SNN previously reported on a separate case involving a former postal worker sentenced for fraudulently collecting $732,000 in disability payments.
The workers compensation fraud prosecution on Long Island is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles P. Kelly and Ashlyn Miranda.