Campbell: "Did you hurt yourself at work?"
Investigator: "No. "
Campbell: "Did you hurt yourself at work?"
Investigator: "Yeah, I did."
And sometimes people with once-real injuries continue to collect worker’s comp payments long after they could return to work. Consider Tom Neilson, whom ABC’s John Stossel confronted in a 1990 20/20 story on worker’s comp fraud. After accidentally touching a power line, Neilson had claimed that he was disabled because he got nervous in social situations, was easily startled by loud noise and machinery, and suffered from tremors. But a private investigator videotaped him happily drinking beer at a crowded beach and racing a stock car at a noisy track.
Neilson’s reaction when confronted with this tape: "I don’t understand what gives them the right to go and tape me...."
Stossel: "What gives them the right is that you’re asking them to pay you and you’re cheating them. I don’t see any tremors here."
Neilson: "This was three years after."
Stossel: "OK, so now you’re better, go back to work. Stop collecting money from the state."
Neilson: "They say, ‘Well, we can get you back to work at $4.60 or $3.50 an hour.’ That’s it."
Stossel: "Five bucks an hour is meaningful and gainful employment to lots of people."
Neilson: "Well, I guess to lots of people it is, yeah.
Stossel: "That’s good enough for other people, but not for you? So, you I should support."
Neilson: "I had no control over the accident."
Stossel: "But you got better."
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