sday for collecting more than $7,500 in workers’ compensation payments after allegedly injuring his hand at a bar and lying about it.
Kevin Breen, a former Town of Hempstead sanitation employee, faces four felony charges for claiming he sustained the injury on the job last fall and collecting disability payments over a two-month period, the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
“Disability payments exist to protect hardworking New Yorkers who are legitimately injured in the course of their jobs,” Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas said in a statement. “Fraudulent workers’ compensation claims are not victimless crimes. These wrongful claims cost taxpayers millions of dollars every year.”
Breen was allegedly intoxicated when he fell through a plate glass window after leaving Charlie Bullfrog’s bar in New Hyde Park around 4 a.m. on Oct. 2, the district attorney’s office said.
The fall lacerated tendons and nerves in Breen’s hand, and he was taken to Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, the office said.
The Town of Hempstead’s Department of Sanitation suspended him from his job as a part-time laborer for a week starting Oct. 1, the DA’s office said. He allegedly claimed he hurt his hand after jumping off a moving truck and filed for disability payments from the town, the DA’s office said.
The town paid Breen more than $7,500 between Nov. 12, 2015, and Jan. 21, 2016, the DA’s office said, but he was fired March 30 after the town’s Workers Compensation Board ruled he had violated the law on March 11.
Breen faces felony charges of third-degree grand larceny, third-degree insurance fraud and first-degree offering a false instrument for filing, as well as a felony violation of the New York State Workers’ Compensation Law.
He was released to probation and is slated for a court appearance on June 16, the DA’s office said. The Legal Aid Society is representing him in court.
