Q'orianka Kilcher, an actor who had a breakout role as Pocahontas in 2005's The New World, is said to have collected nearly $100,000 in a case of workers' compensation fraud. The 32-year-old of North Hollywood allegedly injured her neck and right shoulder in October 2018 while working on Dora and the Lost City of Gold, a 2019 film in which she played an Inca princess. Her attorney said she was injured while riding in a production vehicle. She ultimately collected $96,838 in temporary disability benefits from October 2019 to September 2021, according to investigators with the California Department of Insurance, per KTLA.
She saw a doctor a few times initially but then stopped treatment and failed to respond to an inquiry from her employer's insurance company, the department said in a Monday release, per Variety. She went on to work as a guest star on the Paramount+ TV series Yellowstone, starring Kevin Costner, from July 2019 to October of that year, during filming of the show's third season. But just five days after that job wrapped up, she allegedly reached out to the insurance company, claiming she hadn't worked for a year as a result of severe neck pain, and began collecting temporary total disability benefits, investigators found.
She was charged earlier this year with two felony counts of workers' compensation fraud and pleaded not guilty May 27. She "never intentionally accepted benefits that she did not believe she was entitled to," attorney Michael Becker tells Variety. "Third-party doctors verified her injury and entitlement to benefits" and "Ms. Kilcher was at all times candid with her doctors and treatment providers." But investigators said she was deceitful, having told a doctor that she'd been forced to turn down jobs. The doctor later said he wouldn't have approved the payments if he knew of her previous work history, the department said. (More fraud stories.)
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