BATON ROUGE, La. (August 22, 2006)--A Lake Charles man pleaded guilty to felony insurance fraud Monday following a surveillance investigation by Louisiana Workers' Compensation Corporation (LWCC) and a series of court rulings favorable to the company.

Gregory Hebert, 47, received a suspended sentence, was fined $800 and was placed on four years of active supervised probation. In addition, he is required to pay $13,746 to LWCC in restitution; that amount is payable over the four-year probationary period.

His wife, 45-year-old Patricia Hebert, who cooperated with the criminal investigation, was allowed to plead guilty to attempted felony theft, a misdemeanor. She received one year of unsupervised probation, was fined $400 and owes LWCC $5,000 in restitution. The $5,000 payment has already been turned over to LWCC.

"We take workers' comp fraud very seriously," said LWCC vice president of operations Mike Dileo. "LWCC's Special Investigation Unit did an outstanding job of surveillance in this case, and the company followed it up aggressively through the Office of Workers' Compensation court system, the appeals process and the criminal court system."

Information about suspected workers' comp fraud may be reported to LWCC's fraud hotline at 800-933-3728. The company offers a $1,500 reward for information leading to criminal fraud arrests.

LWCC (www.lwcc.com) is a private, nonprofit mutual insurance company. It is the largest writer of workers' compensation insurance in Louisiana, covering about 23,000 policyholders statewide. The company carries an "A" (Excellent) rating from A.M. Best Company and, for the fifth year in a row, was named in 2006 as one of the top 50 property-casualty insurers in the nation by Ward Group, the leading authority on insurance industry benchmarking.