Benefits Cheat Caught Via Facebook

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Nathalie Blanchard, an IBM employee from the Canadian province of Québec who has been suffering from depression for a year, had a rude awakening earlier this week, when her sick benefits were cancelled after she posted Facebook photos from her recent vacation. Blanchard has been on sick leave for the past 12 months, after having been diagnosed with clinical depression. She received monthly sick benefits from Manulife, her private insurance provider. But when the company discovered that Blanchard had posted photos on Facebook of parties at a local bar in the southern Québec town of Bromont and of her participation at a Chippendales show, as well as a vacation earlier this year, Manulife reportedly determined that if their client managed to have so much fun, then Blanchard was no longer depressed.

When reporters asked representatives of Manulife if they had, in fact, cancelled their client’s sick benefits because of photos posted on Facebook, the company would not offer any comment, but did observe that information obtained through social networking sites would not alone convince the firm to take such a decision.

Blanchard has now hired a lawyer, in order to force Manulife to reinstate her sick benefits. The IBM employee noted that she did, in fact, visit local bars and take trips with friends, but only following her doctor’s recommendations, who suggested that she do something enjoyable, to take her mind off her medical problems. Blanchard’s big mistake, however, appears to have been the fact that she posted these photos for the world to see on Facebook, and did not use the social networking site’s privacy tools, whereby she could have limited who accessed her profile.