A 33-year-old former Salinas resident and truck driver was sentenced Friday to more than eight years in prison for workers’ compensation and welfare fraud, according to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office.
The Salinas Californian reports that Chip Kyle Bolton, of Arizona, was found guilty after a jury trial in April of seven felony counts. Monterey County Superior Court Judge Russell Scott sentenced him to eight years and eight months in prison, a maximum penalty. Bolton claimed an on the job injury in 2011 and was receiving worker’s compensation payments, but was later caught on camera playing basketball. That’s despite his claims that he was having difficulty standing for more than hour and holding his baby daughter,
In 2011, Bolton reported an on-the-job injury to his employer. He received immediate and continued medical treatment under the workers’ compensation system and was placed on total temporary disability for injuries he described to his doctor, prosecutors said. Bolton also told a claims adjuster he couldn’t stand for more than an hour without a numbing sensation running from his hips to his knees, rendering him unable to hold his baby daughter, prosecutors said. Later that day, he was filmed at the YMCA exercising on an elliptical and playing basketball – activities he later denied at his deposition, the DA’s Office said.
Bolton also received periodic public assistance beginning in 2009. In 2012, while receiving this assistance, Bolton applied for and received unemployment insurance benefits. He signed, under penalty of perjury, documents attesting that he wasn’t receiving unemployment benefits when, in fact, he received and had cashed unemployment checks, prosecutors said. He was subsequently denied any benefits whatsoever because he didn’t accurately and truthfully provide information regarding his income, expenses and the number of people in his household, the DA’s Office said.
Judge Scott called Bolton a “perennial liar” in his sentencing, according to the DA’s Office. Per new realignment laws, Bolton will serve his prison sentence in Monterey County Jail. In total, Bolton will be responsible for $84,350.34 in restitution paid to the Department of Social Services and the Employment Development Department.