Susan Murphy-Milano...

But it put him out of action and got him workers’ compensation, and here is where Stover hurt himself beyond anything physical.

He met a woman named Natalie Mack. The two of them became friendly. And the day came when one of them got what seemed like a truly brilliant idea.

Stover, 40, was getting about $860 in workers’ comp every two weeks while recuperating. Why settle for so little when a slight degree of larceny could net so much more?

Such as $153,000.

The above figure was prominently mentioned in Baltimore Circuit Court on Tuesday when Mack, 40, appeared before Judge John Glynn and admitted that, yes, she had done a bad thing. This made it unanimous since, five months ago, Stover sat in a criminal courtroom and admitted that he, too, had done a bad thing.

Stover, no longer a police officer, is now doing six months of home detention for his bad thing and is trying to raise his share of $153,000 in restitution. Mack will have to do the same. She sat there in court Monday morning, smartly dressed in a silky blouse and dark pants with a matching tattoo on her right bicep, staring straight ahead as the dreary contents of the fraud were laid out by Assistant Attorney General Emmet Davitt.

According to Davitt, Stover and Mack met in the spring of 2003, when Stover started getting his disability checks and Mack was working for CorpManagement Inc., the third-party agency that handles workers’ comp payments for the city of Baltimore.

She was the claims adjuster handling Stover’s case. She was a single mother of two; he was, at the time, a single guy.

As Stover later told investigators from the Insurance Fraud Division of the Maryland Insurance Administration and the attorney general’s office, Mack said to him: Why don’t the two of us go out some time? So they did. They seemed to hit it off pretty nicely. They felt they could trust each other.

As Stover also told investigators — though there is dispute over this — they were so comfortable with each other that she suggested the brilliant conspiracy that turned out to be so dumb.

According to Stover, Mack said, “I can get you more money.”

“Oh, really?” Stover asked in his version of the story.

She started cutting him additional medical disability checks. Pick a number, and fill in the blank. In addition to Stover’s original electronic case file, Mack opened two more in his name, which she repeatedly opened and closed, thinking this would avoid detection.

Every time she cut a phony check, she would walk outside the CorpManagement offices and meet Stover on a street corner just a few blocks from City Hall. She would hand him a freshly cut fraudulent check. He would march to a nearby check-cashing operation, cash the check and meet up later with Mack.

The two would then split the bad money. To this day, investigators aren’t certain how the money was divided, since it was all done in cash.

But they are certain of this: Between May 2003 and April 2004, it amounted to $153,000 beyond what Stover was supposed to be paid.

This went on until someone at workers’ compensation confronted Stover at a hearing.

“There appear to be overpayments,” Stover was told. His reaction, investigators say, was “suspicious.” Later it became “remorseful.” Especially when information was handed to the city solicitor’s office, which then asked the Insurance Fraud Division to investigate.

In January, Stover was forced to plead guilty.

On Tuesday, Mack did the same, though her version of the story is slightly different from Stover’s.

“She was led by this guy,” said Glenn Klavans, her attorney, when the brief courtroom proceedings closed. “We intend to present information at sentencing that will significantly mitigate her guilty plea. There is a fine line between fraud and mismanagement.”

Sentencing is set for early August.

And the original $153,000? Sources say the money has vanished, and neither defendant has more than a few dollars in cash assets.

 (Source: Michael Olesker, The Examiner)