Employee caught smashing own head with a faulty sprinkler to fake compensation injury

A Florida woman has been filmed making a desperate attempt at compensation fraud in her workplace. Sheyla Veronica White was handed 18 months of probation after CCTV caught her hitting herself in the face with a sprinkler head at her Fort Lauderdale office.

The Cinque Terre Energy Partners employee can be seen sat at her computer when the object falls from the ceiling onto her desk nearby.

After a moment's thought, she does something completely unexpected: Picking up the palm-sized piece in her left hand and driving it into her face at a painful speed.

According to Fox13, she then filed a compensation claim on the grounds that it had struck her directly when it fell.

The insurance company handling the claim got suspicious and referred the case to Florida's Division of Investigative and Forensic Services.

The agency then got hold of CCTV footage and were able to prove that White had fabricated the entire claim. She was convicted for workers' compensation insurance fraud – a third-degree felony.

Lt Doreen Rivera, from the Florida Department of Financial Services' Fraud Division, told Fox13 that insurance rates were rising as a result of fraud.

But she added that while there were unruly employees trying to game the system, there were also plenty of negligent employers who were not insuring their staff properly against workplace accidents.

She said: "Not having it is a felony and not having it is serious. And why is it serious? Because if a worker gets injured on the job and there's no coverage, they're going to have to cover their own medical costs and those medical bills can, you know, be staggering."