GOSHEN – A Kentucky woman
who stole close to $40,000 in workers’ compensation benefits meant
for her dead mother, a former Orange-Ulster BOCES employee, pled guilty
in Orange County Court.
Sheryl Colson, also known as Sheryl McClure, 47, of New Concord, Kentucky,
pled guilty to a felony charge of grand larceny, New York State Inspector
General Catherine Leahy Scott said.
As part of the case disposition, Colson agreed to pay full restitution
of $39,850. She is to be sentenced in July and was remanded to the Orange
County Jail in lieu of $39,850 cash bail or $100,000 bond.
An investigation found that her mother, a former nurse at Orange-Ulster
BOCES in Goshen, was injured on the job back in 1997 and began receiving
workers’ compensation benefits from the school. Colson’s mother
moved to Kentucky in 2007 and died in 2011, but the $400-per-week checks
kept coming from BOCES, which is self-insured.
Colson had access to her mother’s financial affairs and continued
signing the checks, depositing them into her mother’s bank account
and using the account’s debit card to make purchases for more than
two years after her mother died. She used the money to pay general household
expenses, restaurant tabs, and products from an Indiana company specializing
in the production of hand-blown pipes and other smoking devices.
Scott called Colson’s actions “a shockingly morbid scheme.”
