14 DAY TRIAL // On June 21, 2013, 60-year-old Wanda Lee Ann Podgurski was sentenced in absentia to 20 years and four months in prison for running an insurance fraud scam. Now, the woman has been arrested in Mexico.
The fraudster failed to appear in court in January, during her trial.
Interestingly, she seemed pretty confident that authorities couldn’t catch her. According to the San Diego County News Center, at one point, she tweeted “Catch me if you can.”
The tweet was presumably addressed to District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, the only individual followed by Podgurski’s Twitter account.
Steve Walker, a spokesperson for the San Diego County District Attorney, has told Ars Technica that this tweet wasn’t used to locate Podgurski.
However, Dumanis says that the information from the social media website was turned over to the Computer and Technology Crime High-Tech Response Team.
“The defendant in this case was brazen in both the large-scale fraud she committed and the way she mocked the criminal justice system,” Dumanis said.
“Law enforcement, and in particular the U.S. Marshals and Fugitive Task Force, did a great job tracking the defendant down and taking her into custody.”
Podgurski managed to defraud insurance companies of over $660,000 (€511,000) by pretending to be disabled.
She worked for Amtrak and held insurance policies with six companies. Under these policies, if she were to become disabled, she could get a total of $40,000 (€31,000) per month from the insurance firms.
In August 2006, she claimed she slipped and fell in her home. The accident allegedly led to her becoming disabled.
She managed to trick several doctors into believing she was disabled, but private investigators hired by the insurance companies found that she didn’t actually have any problems.
“This was an extreme case, but any level of disability fraud ultimately increases insurance costs for everyone. Our Disability and Healthcare Insurance Fraud Program investigates and prosecutes fraudulent medical and disability claims and policies,” said Dumanis.