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Worker's Compensation Cheater Earns Year's Jail Time
Former San Mateo County collections worker Yolanda Dobkins was sentenced to a year in jail Tuesday for misrepresenting an injury in order to collect worker's compensation.
Dobkins received five years supervised probation and was ordered to pay $67,000 to cover costs for the investigation that led to her conviction.
A jury convicted Dobkins in November of four counts of insurance fraud and attempted perjury.
She was acquitted of five other related charges.
Dobkins had worked as a full-time county collections officer since 1998 when, in February 2001, she filed a workers' compensation claim for bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome.
Dobkins, who has had multiple surgeries on both arms and suffers from reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome, told the county she couldn't work because simple tasks like shaking hands had become unbearable.
Prosecutor Kathryn Alberti said Dobkins exaggerated the seriousness of her injury to collect $24,000 in state disability payments and $10,000 in worker's compensation benefits.
The county investigated the claim after a secretary spotted Dobkins prying open an elevator door after a meeting.
Independent investigators began secretly videotaping Dobkins and obtained footage of her doing tasks.
Dobkins was slapped with criminal charges after she claimed to have not done such tasks at a deposition with investigators who had seen the footage.
Her attorney, Kathleen McCasey, asked for a new trial on Tuesday, based on what she called vindictive behavior by county employees. McCasey added that the jury should have been allowed to hear about Dobkins' additional surgeries.
Judge Parsons rejected McCasey's argument and said that he considered sentencing Dobkins to the maximum term of six years in prison because of her failure to admit any wrongdoing to this day.