Employees Conspired To Defraud Workers’ Comp By Staging Accident

A Helena jury found Matthew Ryan Ailer guilty Friday of felony workers’ compensation fraud. The Montana Attorney General’s Office charged Ailer in 2014, alleging that on October 16, 2011, he had staged a work place accident with his two co-workers by placing a 200-pound floor buffer on his chest in an attempt to create work-place injuries so that he could collect worker’s compensation benefits he was not entitled to receive. Earlier this year, Ailer’s co-workers Chelsea Chafee and Jeffrey Russell pled guilty to accountability to theft of worker’s compensation benefits for their part in assisting Ailer in defrauding workers’ compensation.