Cheat misspells doc's name on fraudulent form

Woman who feigned disease owes 652 hours of community service to cancer facilities

You could call it poetic justice.

A Colorado judge has imposed, in my opinion, a fitting sentence (and fine) on a female postal worker who faked cancer and was convicted of fraud.

Judge Raymond Moore

According to a story by Alex Horton in the Washington Post that was reprinted in many newspapers across the country, U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore recently sentenced Caroline Boyle to "serve 652 hours of community service at a cancer treatment center, cancer research center or hospice — which is precisely how many hours of falsified sick leave she took" from the U.S. Postal Service office in Aurora, Colorado.

The judge also imposed five years of probation (including six months of home confinement with an electronic monitor, "along with a $10,000 fine and restitution of exactly $20,798.38, acting U.S. Attorney for Colorado Bob Troyer said in a statement."

The figure represented what the 60-year-old Boyle, who had worked for the postal service since 1991, was paid for administrative sick leave while missing two years of work after claiming "that cancer attacked her white blood cells and ravaged her immune system, leaving Boyle too weak to come into work."

Bob Troyer

Boyle's illegal acts were discovered partially because she'd misspelled a doctor's name and botched the signature when she scribbled a note "presumably detailing [her] non-Hodgkin's lymphoma," Horton's story said.

She reportedly confessed when confronted with proof of her misdeeds.

Boyle had intended "to continue defrauding the government with sick leave until her retirement in April, which she planned to celebrate with a Hawaiian cruise."

Real facts about real diseases, their real treatments and real aftermaths are contained in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.