Man gets caught working while receiving injury benefits

Working in a timber yard and driving hire cars while claiming $25,000 in workplace injury insurance benefits has cost a 48-year-old Melbourne man a conviction and a four-month prison term if he reoffends over the next two years.

Robert Window pleaded guilty to two charges in the Ringwood Magistrate’s Court after claiming $25,000 in benefits he was not entitled to. The first charge covered the period between March and July 2007 and involved $15,733.40. The second charge covered the period between December 2008 and October 2009 and involved $9266.60.

The money was paid back just before last week’s hearing.

Magistrate Brear convicted Window on both charges and sentenced him to an aggregate sentence of four months imprisonment, wholly suspended for 24 months. He was fined $7500. Had he not pleaded guilty, Magistrate Brear said Window would have been sentenced to serve six months in prison.

Window suffered a back injury when working as a machinist in 1992. He had surgery in 1993 and 1995. In 2002, he joined a rehabilitation program and retrained as a computer technician and was working 32 hours a week in that field by June 2003.

A WorkSafe investigation found he received benefits while working in IT at a timber supplies company in 2007.

In 2009, he had set up a hire-car business and was driving while receiving weekly injury payments. A Victorian Taxi Directorate audit found Window had driven one of his two hire cars 49 times between January and August 2009, representing about 80% of the jobs carried out by the business.

To obtain payments in both periods, he produced certificates stating that he was "unfit for any duties" and that he had not been working. On the day he obtained a medical assessment supporting his application to the Victorian Taxi Directorate to drive hire cars, his regular GP declared him unfit for any duties.