Postal Service Employee Pleads Guilty After Faking Cancer in Order to Work from Home and Claim Hundreds of Hours of Sick Leave
4/28/17 DENVER – Caroline Zarate Boyle, age 59, of Highlands Ranch, Colorado, a U.S. Postal Service employee, pled guilty today to presenting a forged writing to the United States with the intent to defraud after fabricating to her employer that she had cancer in order to work from home and claim hundreds of hours of sick leave. The guilty plea occurred before U.S. District Court Judge Raymond P. Moore, Acting U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer and U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General Special Agent in Charge (USPS OIG) Scott Pierce announced.
Boyle was first charged by Criminal Complaint on March 3, 2017. She was indicted by a federal grand jury in Denver on March 16, 2017. She pled guilty today, April 28, 2017. Boyle is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Moore on July 25, 2017 at 9:00 a.m.
According to the Factual Basis for the Change of Plea, Boyle, a U.S. Postal Service employee, decided to take some time off of work after she was not selected for a promotion she had sought. To take the time off she told her supervisor that she was recently diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, when in fact she did not have any type of cancer. She then began to take substantial amounts of sick leave.
Boyle continued the ruse until she was interviewed by an agent of the Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General. It was determined in the approximate 20 months that the defendant’s fraud lasted, she used her non-existent cancer treatment to support both unwarranted sick leave and unwarranted accommodations allowing her to work part-time or work from home five days a week. The defendant intended to continue using the fake illness until her scheduled retirement in April 2017. Despite claiming the cancer treatment had her too sick to work a regular schedule or come into the office, Boyle was planning a post-retirement cruise in Hawaii.
In support of her ruse, Boyle emailed her supervisor notes from two different doctors (at least four notes total), indicating that she was receiving cancer treatment. However, the notes were created by the defendant herself. Investigators learned that she was not a patient of either doctor.
The charge Boyle pled guilty to carries a penalty of up to 10 years in federal prison and up to a $250,000 fine.
This case is being investigated by the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General and is being prosecuted by Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Burrows.
According to USPS records Boyle was a Purchasing and Supply Management employee with an estimated annual salary of $126, 381
Poor excuse for a POS!!
I hope karma gets your ass, CANCER is no joke….you deserve everything your about to receive.. KARMA will hopefully get you in the end as well!!
POS!!
The issue here is EARNED SICK Leave. You know that your sick leave has no cash value. If you saved let’s say 1500 hrs. you can only put towards your annuity that it. Comes out to hardly anything. Do the math. She may have been planning to use up all her SL by retirement time. But some of your comments are right. She didn’t go about it the right. Should have seen a doctor for stress or something.
Exactly!!
typical postal mismanagement scum…….126K without a college education……only in the Postal Circus. I will be glad when this place implodes from its own corruption! how much did she steal in PFP bonus scam Mr Postal OIG?
They aren’t worried about that $$$ it was overage anyway…pppfffttt!!
Now she will get that promotion. Good Job USPS Manager of the Year.
Tin Man are you saying through overt or covert operation, management has blame to share for allowing this charade to continue, and through investigation? Another way I think to mitigate the outcome. Something is mentally wrong with anyone using these tactics as a way to garner financial gains through fraudulent means!
People faking workmen’s comp injuries, abusing sick leave, etc., are bad enough, but claiming they have cancer to perpetuate the scam is one of the lowest things a person can do. This is a 59 year old doing it, and it just proves that with age wisdom doesn’t always tag along, nor does a conscience.
That she be fined and jailed is certainly appropriate, and I note she made twice as much as I did as a city letter carrier. But I believe in cases like this, and we hear more and more douche bags falsely claiming cancer for big bucks, they should be forced to visit a cancer specialty hospital or a large metro hospital that deals with stage four patients, and give them a first hand look at what these horrifying disease does to them. Or worse, take them to children’s hospitals or St. Jude’s in Memphis and see what real non-Hodgkins lymphoma is and how horribly unfair it is to make poor little kids suffer from it or other tragic cancers.
I will not stoop to wish cancer on this woman or any faker because then they’ll get genuine sympathy which after pulling this cold blooded stunt they do not deserve. If people like this piece of shit have any sense of wrongdoing, maybe seeing real victims and watching what they suffer through between the disease and the treatment will change their minds. I can’t imagine getting much lower unless you’re one of those types who stalk towns and cities like Joplin, Missouri to price gouge victims for simple bottles of water, sell phony insurance or take up “donations” that go straight into the crook’s pockets. Whoever said it takes all kinds was wrong. Humanity does not need people like this, ever.
That wouldn’t effect someone like this, no morals to begin with…just another brain dead Mgt. body!
Just proves how many toolbags really are fakers not only
in life but at their jobs. FIRE THEM ALL!!!!
Moe Howard you lack human compassion.
All she had to do was go to a shrink for real escape from postal indoctrination process, ya the process cost a few dollars. But I hardly see this as a criminal case, I see this as a misguided employee even being management that had questionable stability and allowed herself to make a decision that could have had the same benefit of being on sick leave through the proper medical channels guided in the psychologist or psychiatrist field.
I can appreciate your trying to understand this woman’s situation, but my gut instinct tells me she was just a fraud from the get go. I can tell you of cases of WC fraud, not as heinous as this, but where the individuals involved knew EXACTLY what they were doing, didn’t give a damn and kept it up for years until one was fired for other wrongdoing in addition to her fraud, and the other just flat out refused to work but ended up rightfully out of the USPS because it had been discovered she was indeed committing fraud and was foolish enough to tell somebody!
I have no empathy for this woman who was found guilty because of the nature of the fraud and the audacity it took to fake an illness that is so terrifying and often fatal for those who really do get cancer. It was a slap in their faces, and a very calculated cold hate filled thing to do. If she had thought for even a few minutes about the people she was mimicking in the name of stealing money, it might have stopped her, but this is the work of a true psychopath who clearly had no interest for anybody but herself. A friend of mine lost two brothers in two years to cancer, and the real compassion goes to people like him, not this 126K a year slimeball.
Not WC,
It was sick leave,
Big difference in the two
That is why I stated her quest with the psychologist or psychiatrist field would have been more serving.
I don’t have a doctorates degree, so take my statement as a analytical thought.