Actress Q’orianka Kilcher, famous for her roles in “The New World” and “Dog,” has been charged with workers compensation insurance fraud after allegedly receiving more than $90,000 in disability benefits while working on Paramount’s hit television series “Yellowstone,” California regulators announced Monday.
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Kilcher, who lives in Hollywood, was charged in April with separate counts of fraud under the state penal code and the state insurance code, according to court records. She subsequently turned herself into authorities and at her arraignment on May 27, entered not guilty pleas, the California Department of Insurance said in an official press release Monday.
“California law prohibits misrepresenting injuries to medical providers to collect workers’ compensation insurance benefits, yet the investigation found Kilcher worked on ‘Yellowstone’ during the time she told a doctor she had been too injured to work,” Monday’s press release states.
Kilcher allegedly said she saw a doctor several times in 2018, after purportedly suffering an injury to her right shoulder and neck while filming the movie “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” in October of that year. But Kilcher allegedly stopped treatment after only a few visits and after refused to respond to the insurance company handling her claim on her employer’s behalf, according to the Department of Insurance.
Then, in October of the following year, Kilcher contacted the insurer claiming she needed treatment. The Department of Insurance said she informed the doctor handling her claim that she couldn’t accept acting work that was being offered due to her severe neck pain, and she subsequently began receiving disability benefits on a temporary basis.
But during its evaluation of her wage statements from her employer, the department discovered that Kilcher was filming Paramount Network’s hit series “Yellowstone” for three months from July to October 2019, contrary to her previous statements to the doctor that she couldn’t work for a year.
Kilcher portrayed Angela Blue Thunder in the series, and made appearances in more than three episodes.
“According to the records, she returned to the doctor and started receiving disability benefits five days after last working on the show,” the Department of Insurance said. From October 2019 to September 2021, Kilcher received $96,838 in disability payments, according to the department’s records.
The doctor responsible for handling Kilcher’s claim stated that had they known the actress kept working despite her statements about being too injured to work, Kilcher would have never been granted such benefits, according to Monday’s release.
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