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Wednesday, January 22, 2003

By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

They had teams of five agents following her around in separate cars. They had a time-lapse camera hidden 15 feet up in a tree behind her Verona house. They had a global positioning satellite tracking device attached to the bottom of her Chevy conversion van.

For years, U.S. Postal Inspectors spied on Elaine Borghini, 55, because they suspected her of faking a wrist injury to collect workers' compensation benefits she didn't deserve.

Yesterday in U.S. District Court, a jury deciding her fate saw the videotaped evidence that surveillance produced.

Tapes showed her hauling cleaning supplies to and from a pickup on her way to housecleaning jobs, visiting Cedar Point and Kennywood amusement parks, lugging baggage at the airport on a return trip from Cancun and carrying buckets of ice at a hotel in Elkins, W.Va.

She used her right hand and wrist just as dexterously as her left, even though she says her right wrist is too injured for her to return to her job as a clerk at the General Mail Facility on the North Side.

For some six years, the government says, Borghini has collected about $30,000 a year in workers' comp checks while secretly working as a housecleaner.

"We saw her doing all kinds of things with her right hand," Postal Inspector Jim O'Connell told the jury. "I never saw anything that indicated she was in any pain or distress."

Borghini was indicted last year on charges of wire fraud and workers' comp fraud dating to 1996, although she hasn't worked since 1992.

The trial, which started last week, offers an unusual display of the investigative tactics of postal inspectors.

The government's position is that Borghini is costing taxpayers a lot of money. In all, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Shaun Sweeney, Borghini ripped off the federal government for between $150,000 and $180,000 in disability payments.

In addition to the surveillance evidence, the government says Borghini lied to the U.S. Postal Service and the U.S. Department of Labor by filling out forms saying she wasn't self-employed when she was cleaning homes in Oakmont, North Huntingdon and Irwin. She even put an ad in the Pennysaver advertising her services.

Her lawyer, Tom Ceraso, has been trying to convince the jury that Borghini is genuinely disabled. Both sides agree that Borghini had suffered a true injury. In 1994 she had operations for carpal tunnel syndrome in her wrist, and she later developed another wrist condition called Keinbock's disease.

But the jury will have to decide which medical experts to believe as to when, or if, she could return to work. Ceraso's witnesses say Borghini is permanently disabled. The government's say she isn't.

Regardless of her wrist condition, she proved an elusive quarry during part of the surveillance, and she seemed to know she was being watched. On several occasions in November 2000, O'Connell said, she managed to lose five agents following in separate cars. Sometimes she would pull into a parking lot or a gas station, turn around and wait. Sometimes she drove in circles or pulled off the road.

"We ran into a lot of difficulty because of her evasive driving techniques," O'Connell said.

So O'Connell decided to employ some high technology. After securing a court order February, he and an inspector from New Jersey sneaked onto Borghini's property at 3 a.m. one morning and attached a transmitter by magnet to the bottom of her van.

The device tracked the vehicle by satellite, and the information was later downloaded onto a computer to reveal latitude, longitude and sometimes street addresses.

The computer printout showed a pattern of where she'd driven. Together with the video surveillance and the tree camera, the agents were able to keep tabs on her much of the time.

The trial continues today.