(The following article by Clair Johnson was posted on the Billings Gazette website on August 21.)
BILLINGS, Mont. — A former railroad worker who admitted to lying about income he was earning to get Railroad Retirement disability benefits was sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation and ordered to pay $32,238 in restitution.
U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull on Friday also gave the defendant, Raymond E. Fievet, 63, of Billings, credit for one day in jail for the time he was processed by the U.S. Marshals Service. Fievet pleaded guilty in June to one misdemeanor count of failing to report income information to the Railroad Retirement Board. The judge dismissed three other felony counts as part of a plea agreement.
One of the problems, Cebull noted, was that Fievet did not receive full retirement benefits from nearly 30 years of working for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. and had trouble making ends meet. Fievet was terminated from his job two weeks short of 30 years because of an injury and did not get his retirement. Fievet would have received full retirement and medical benefits had he been allowed to work one hour of one day of the next month from his termination, he said.
The judge asked who saved money by not allowing Fievet to work that one hour by doing something like “sharpening pencils.”
“I would assume Burlington Northern,” replied Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Wolff.
“That’s the darndest thing I’ve seen. One of them anyway,” Cebull said.
Fievet’s attorney, Lance Lundvall, said Fievet was injured when he got crushed between two objects by a forklift operator and there was no doubt he could not do the work he was hired to do. Fievet tried to get light duty but was denied the opportunity, he said.
“I had to go home,” Fievet said. “I had no choice but to apply for disability.”
Lundvall said the railroad retirement disability benefit allows a person to earn no more than $400 a month in outside income, a figure unchanged since 1974.
Fievet knows what he did was wrong and has cooperated with the government, he said.
Fievet apologized to the court and the Railroad Retirement Board, the community, family and friends. “It certainly won’t happen again,” he said.
Fievet was a pipe fitter for Burlington Northern in Iowa. In 1992, he had back and leg pain and applied for disability benefits under the Railroad Retirements Act. He could not earn more than $400 a month or more than $4,800 a year in outside income or he would lose his disability benefit.
Fievet moved to Billings in 1998 and began working as a driver for Big Sky Auto Auction, the government said. His reported income never exceeded the limits. A year later, Fievet’s wife also began reporting earnings at Big Sky Auto Auction. This continued through 2004. Wolff said the outside income exceeded the limits.
An investigation found that Fievet’s wife never worked for Big Sky Auto Auction and that an office manager at the business helped Fievet hide income by reporting a portion of his earnings under his wife’s Social Security number. Big Sky Auto Auction closed in October 2004.