An actress with a recurring role on the popular drama series “Yellowstone” has been charged with workers’ compensation fraud, the California Department of Insurance (CDI) announced on July 11. The CDI alleges that Q’Orianka Kilcher broke the law in collecting $96,838 in undeserved disability benefits between October 2019 and September 2021.

The high-profile case puts the spotlight on workers’ compensation fraud problems across the country, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and increasing costs for businesses and workers alike.

According to the CDI, Kilcher claimed to have injured her neck and right shoulder in October 2018 while filming “Dora and the Lost City of Gold.” The 32-year-old actress saw a doctor a few times that year but stopped treatment and failed to respond to her employer’s insurance company while they handled her workers’ compensation claim.

According to a CDI news release, Kilcher contacted the insurance company in early October 2019 saying she needed treatment. Soon thereafter she told the doctor handling her claim that her neck pain was so severe it prevented her from accepting work offered to her. Based on those statements, she began receiving temporary total disability benefits on October 14, 2019.

“After reviewing wage information from her employer, the investigation found Kilcher had worked as an actress on the television show ‘Yellowstone’ from July 2019 to October 2019, despite her statements to the doctor that she had been unable to work for a year,” according to the CDI announcement. “According to records, she returned to the doctor and started receiving disability benefits five days after last working on the show.”

Kilcher has been charged with two felony counts of workers’ compensation insurance fraud and is being prosecuted by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office. Her attorney maintains her innocence.

As in most states, it is a felony in California to make a false or fraudulent material statement to obtain (or deny) compensation. Kilcher could face up to five years in county jail or state prison in addition to paying fines equal to double the amount of the fraud, plus restitution and reimbursing investigation costs.

Workers file fraudulent claims every day in the United States, resulting in higher workers’ comp insurance premiums for employers. Many employees pass this employment cost on to workers in the form of lower wages. Nearly every state has laws intended to prevent workers’ compensation fraud with stiff penalties for those found guilty of fraud.

Each state has teams of detectives and special prosecutors dedicated to conducting hundreds of workers’ compensation insurance fraud investigations each year, many of which result in prosecutions.

In Florida, for example, the office that investigates these crimes is the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation Fraud (BWCF). There are more than 20 detectives and five prosecutors engaged in a number of activities, including discovering and investigating:

• Employees faking or exaggerating work injuries to file and collect workers’ compensation benefits
• Employees who work other jobs while collecting comp benefits
• Businesses that break the law by not having enough coverage

In 2018, the BWCF referred over 500 cases for prosecution, resulting in nearly 400 arrests.

It is not known if the LA County DA will seek the maximum penalties prescribed by law for her alleged offenses to make an example of the actress since workers’ compensation fraud is so widely underreported.

Processing workers’ compensation claims is a tedious, error-prone, and manual process requiring adjusters to sort through countless documents while navigating an ever-increasing number of industry rules. If they weren’t so bogged down with stacks of paperwork, experienced adjusters would be far more likely to catch the contradictions in a case like Kilcher’s.

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