Business Owner Accused of $160K Workers’ Comp Fraud

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Joseph Arthurs, owner of VGN Enterprise Corporation, a Patchogue, New York-based asbestos removal company, has been charged with workers’ compensation insurance fraud by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors allege Arthurs intentionally misrepresented his company’s payroll, number of employees, and occupational hazards to a workers’ compensation insurance company between 2023 and 2024 in order to obtain lower insurance rates.
The fraud resulted in VGN Enterprise Corporation underpaying insurance premiums by more than $160,000, according to prosecutors.
Arthurs was arrested on Aug. 25, given a desk appearance ticket, and later arraigned on Sept. 9.

Batesville, Arkansas’ Safety and HR Director Chris Cash told the City Council the city has recorded 10 workers’ compensation and personal injury claims so far in 2026, down from a total of 12 in 2025, with police and fire departments accounting for several incidents.
Cash described several unusual injuries, including a police officer who was kicked in the head and neck during a suspect chase and sustained a concussion, an airport employee bitten by a dog while trying to free it from a chain wrapped around a pole and a community center employee knocked down during a basketball tournament among others.
Separately, the city has had four vehicle accidents in 2026, three involving the police department during suspect pursuits, which Cash described as largely unavoidable, along with a sanitation truck fire caused by hot exhaust igniting leaves and debris that melted some hoses and triggered an insurance claim; none of these incidents resulted in personal injuries.
Cash noted the city relies on free training through the Arkansas Municipal League and Department of Transportation covering flagger safety, heavy equipment operation, forklift certification and defensive driving, saving money on services that would otherwise be expensive to provide through private-sector training.

A Franklin Circuit Court judge ruled on Sept. 1 that Kentucky’s workers’ compensation medical fee schedule is a public record that the Department of Workers’ Claims cannot require providers and payers to purchase from a private contracted vendor. The reuling grants summary judgment to D1 Data Solutions (d/b/a RefMed) after the Department denied its Open Records Act request.
The court found the Department’s contract with its vendor explicitly states the fee schedule “shall be the property of, and owned by, the Department of Workers’ Claims,” making it a public record regardless of who helped produce it, and invoked the government edicts doctrine to hold that a document with the binding force of law cannot be copyrighted or restricted by whoever drafted it.
Every physician, hospital, insurer, and employer in Kentucky’s workers’ comp system is required to use the fee schedule, and the ruling notes the state’s vendor had already been paid $85,010 in taxpayer funds to prepare it, meaning users were being charged a second time for a publicly funded document.
The ruling establishes that the schedule can now be obtained directly from the Department through a standard Open Records Act request at no more than the cost of reproduction.