Washington Interpreter Charged with Overbilling State for Fake Appointments

A Des Moines, Wash., Spanish-language interpreter faces a felony charge alleging she overbilled the state more than $5,600 for mileage and patient appointments that never happened.

The Washington Attorney General’s office charged Bersabed Boling, 41, with one count of first-degree theft. She was scheduled to be arraigned in Thurston County Superior Court last week.

The criminal charge is the result of a Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) investigation. L&I paid Boling to interpret at health care and other appointments to help limited-English proficient workers recover from workplace injuries.

She was doing business as En Tu Idioma, which means “In Your Language,” when the alleged incidents occurred in 2012 and 2013.

Court documents accuse Boling of using several schemes to steal from the state, including billing for interpreter services at 15 health care and vocational appointments that never occurred.

Meanwhile, she submitted mileage for “physically impossible” trips by claiming she made multiple round trips from Auburn to Everett on the same days and at overlapping times.

And instead of claiming mileage from her permanent address in Des Moines, Boling said she started trips from an Auburn trailer park.

Boling told L&I that when she went to work, she first left her children with a relative in Auburn, but wasn’t sure of the relative’s trailer address, charging papers said. An L&I investigator visited two possible addresses that Boling provided, and found that one had been vacant for a year and the other belonged to a resident who didn’t know her.

Source: Washington Department of Labor & Industries