Woman who faked cancer to get out of work sentenced to community service with patients

A postal worker from Highlands Ranch who faked cancer to take paid leave from work must spend 652 hours doing community service at a cancer treatment center, cancer research center or hospice, a U.S. District Court judge ruled.

Caroline Zarate Boyle, 60, on Tuesday also was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. She also must pay $20,798.38 in restitution to the U.S. Postal Service for faking notes from a doctor and lying about being ill to take sick leave until she retired, according to a news release from acting U.S. Attorney Robert Troyer.

Boyle was criminally charged on March 3 and then indicted by a federal grand jury on March 16 on felony counts of forged writings, wire fraud and possession of false papers to defraud. In April, she pleaded guilty without a plea agreement.

According to the court record, Boyle admitted she decided to take time off work by pretending to have cancer after being passed over for a promotion in summer of 2015. She told her supervisor that she was recently diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Although she did not have cancer or any other serious illness, she took 112 days of sick leave from the USPS Customer Products and Fulfilment Category Management Center in Aurora over the next 20 months and was allowed to work part-time or from home. She also was granted paid administrative leave that did not count against her sick-leave balance.

Investigators from the Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General During found Boyle emailed her supervisor forged notes from two different doctors — botching the spelling of the name of one — saying that she was receiving cancer treatment.