I worked graveyard at Target for about 6 or 7 months.
While I was there I almost got busted for Workman’s Comp fraud. Penalty if found guilty was a maximum of 5 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.
The incident started off innocently but snowballed into being interviewed by human resources, than meeting with the big boss and then being scheduled to appear before a panel of judges and lawyers up in San Francisco. The panel meeting was set for two months away so I had to sweat it out for two months thinking about jail and fines.
But a few weeks before the meeting a woman called and she said they didn’t want to go to all the trouble to prosecute me and she kind of half-believed my story and so they dropped the case. I didn’t deliberately try to defraud them, it just started off as an innocent lie. In fact in the initial interview. I told human resources that I didn’t want any money and I didn’t want to file for workman’s comp, but they said I had to.
I had hurt my back and my mom (who was usually a rigorously honest person) in this case said to tell the boss I hurt my back at work. I had actually hurt it at my dads but I needed an excuse as to why I missed two days and it as more convenient to explain the missing days by saying I hurt it at work. Like I said, I wasn’t after any money or anything. But that was scary stuff.