A home health-care worker from Monessen hired to care for a semi-comatose woman in Irwin falsified records to inflate her pay from an insurance company by more than $130,000 and continued to submit time sheets after she'd been fired, according to state agents.

Mary Lee Lowden, also known as Mary Lee Buffer, 41, of Delaware Street, was arrested yesterday by agents from the state attorney general's insurance fraud section.

She was arraigned before a magistrate in Westmoreland County on charges of theft by deception and insurance fraud.

According to an affidavit, she submitted fake time sheets showing that she worked many more hours than she really did between 2003 and 2008. She was fired last year after the woman's family said she was unreliable. She continued to submit time sheets to State Farm Insurance for months after she left, according to the affidavit.

When Agent Amy Adams called Ms. Lowden on Oct. 26, according to her affidavit, Ms. Lowden said, "I'm going to admit that most of what they are saying is true."

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