Post Office Worker Caught Faking Cancer, Judge Gets Creative With Punishment

A Colorado woman who worked at the post office began telling her coworkers about her cancer in 2015, eventually claiming she was too weak to come to work and taking lots of sick leave. Turns out, the whole thing was fake.

Caroline Boyle, 60, was convicted of fraud Tuesday after it was revealed she tricked her U.S. Postal Service office in Aurora, Colorado. A district judge handed down a punishment of 6 months of home confinement with an electronic monitor and five years of probation. Boyle will have to pay back $20,798.38 she was wrongly paid in fraudulent sick leave on top of a $10,000 fine.

Boyle will also have to volunteer with actual sick people.

U.S. District Judge Raymond P. Moore sentenced Boyle to 652 hours of community service at a cancer treatment center, cancer research center or hospice, according to the Washington Post Wednesday. She has to volunteer the exact number of hours she wrongly took in sick leave.

Boyle was caught because she forged doctor’s notes, misspelling her doctor’s name and getting their signature wrong. Boyle spun a web of lies claiming she had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Boyle confessed when Postal Service investigators confronted her with evidence and executed a search warrant that revealed she wasn’t suffering from cancer.

She pleaded guilty to charges in April.

Not only did she fake her own cancer, but Boyle accused a subordinate who actually had cancer of faking it. The co-worker testified that Boyle had denied them of benefits like extended sick leave that Boyle would later take for her fake cancer.

Boyle had worked at the Postal Service since 1991. She had planned on using fraudulent sick time until her retirement this year, after which she would take a Hawaiian cruise, according to the Post.

“The American public trusts that U.S. Postal Service employees will obey the law. This type of behavior within the Postal Service is not tolerated and the overwhelming majority of Postal Service employees, which serve the public, are honest, hardworking, and trustworthy individuals who would never consider engaging in any type of criminal behavior,” said Postal Service investigator Scott Pierce in a statement.