Yes, it happens. No, you are not being paranoid. Insurance carriers hire investigators to sit outside houses and film injured workers, and there is nothing unlawful about it when it is done from a public place.
This page is not about being frightened of it. It is about understanding what the video actually does inside a case, because the part that hurts people is almost never the part they expect.
When carriers reach for it
Surveillance costs money, so it is not ordered at random. It tends to show up at predictable moments: before an independent medical examination, ahead of a hearing on degree of disability, after an expensive treatment request such as a surgery authorization, around the time a case is heading toward permanency, and whenever something in the file does not sit right with the adjuster.
An investigator working from a public street can film your house, follow you to the supermarket and record you in a parking lot. What they cannot do is trespass onto your property or record where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. In practice, most of what turns up is shot from a car at the end of a block.
What they are actually looking for
Not a confession. Not you doing backflips. They are looking for inconsistency — a gap between what you have described and what the camera shows.
You told an examiner you cannot lift more than ten pounds, and there is forty seconds of you carrying a case of water from the trunk. You said you cannot sit for long, and you drove forty minutes each way. You said your shoulder does not go above ninety degrees, and there you are reaching into an overhead cabinet.
That is the whole game. It does not require you to have lied. It only requires the description and the footage to disagree.
Why innocent footage still does damage
Because video is a terrible witness about pain and a very good witness about motion.
What the camera captured was ninety seconds out of a nine-hour day. It did not capture the two hours you spent on the couch afterward, the medication you took before you went out, or the fact that it was the best you had felt all week. There is no audio, no pain scale, and no before or after. A man who carries the groceries because nobody else is home to do it looks identical to a man who was never hurt.
Good days are real. Most orthopedic conditions vary. But variability is a thing you have to have said out loud, in advance, or it sounds like an excuse invented after the tape.
The part nobody warns you about: your own doctor gets the video
Here is what actually happens once surveillance is produced, and it is the step that decides a surprising number of these cases.
The Judge can direct that your treating physician watch the video and submit a report addressing whether it changes the opinion on your degree of disability and your restrictions. Not the carrier’s consultant. Your doctor. The one whose reports the case has been running on.
And then reality intrudes. Treating physicians are busy people with full schedules, and sitting down to watch investigator footage and write a supplemental narrative about it is nobody’s favorite afternoon. It is not what they went to medical school for, it is not a patient visit, and it is genuinely unwelcome work. A great many of these directives land on a desk and sit there.
That silence is not neutral. If the video is in evidence and your own physician has said nothing about it, the only medical voice in the room is the one the carrier is paying for. The report that never arrives is the loss you do not see coming.
Which is why, when it happens, the job is to make it as easy as humanly possible for that doctor to comply — get the footage to the office in a form the office can actually open, make plain exactly what question is being asked, and follow up more than once. It is unglamorous work and it is often the difference.
Social media is surveillance you volunteer
Investigators do not have to sit in a car if you will do the filming yourself.
The Third Department decided Matter of Qureshi v Rite Aid Corporation in 2025. The claimant had said he had not worked since 2017 and was socially withdrawn. His tax returns showed business ownership and income, and his social media documented extensive travel and social activity. The court held that substantial evidence supported the Board’s finding that the failure to disclose those business and travel activities was a material misrepresentation.
No investigator, no van, no long lens. A public profile and a set of tax returns.
Two things people miss. First, it is not only what you post — it is what you are tagged in, at somebody else’s wedding, on somebody else’s account. Second, a photograph has no date stamp anyone trusts; a picture from a vacation two years before the accident can turn into an afternoon of testimony about when it was taken.
What is actually at stake
Section 114-a of the Workers’ Compensation Law. The statute says that where a claimant, for the purpose of obtaining compensation or influencing a determination, “knowingly makes a false statement or representation as to a material fact, such person shall be disqualified from receiving any compensation directly attributable to such false statement or representation.”
That first penalty is mandatory. On top of it, the Board may impose an additional discretionary penalty — and in the right case that discretion extends to disqualifying a claimant from future wage benefits altogether. In Matter of Alzate v Quality Building Services Corp., also decided in 2025, the Third Department upheld permanent disqualification from wage replacement benefits where a claimant had repeatedly denied prior injuries on forms, at independent medical examinations, and under oath.
That is the real exposure. Not embarrassment at a hearing — the end of the wage side of the claim.
How to not have this problem
The protection is not secrecy. It is accuracy, and it is free.
- Describe a range, not a floor. “I cannot lift” is almost never true. “On a good day I can carry a bag of groceries from the car, and I pay for it that night” is true, and it survives a video.
- Say the same thing everywhere. To your treating doctor, to the examiner at the IME, on forms, and under oath. The inconsistencies that sink claims are usually between two of your own statements, not between you and the footage.
- Do not minimize your prior injuries. That is what Alzate was about. Old records surface, and a denial that was easier in the moment becomes the centerpiece of a penalty application.
- Assume the camera. Not to hide — to stop doing anything you would need to explain, including favors for neighbors that your restrictions do not allow.
- Tighten your privacy settings, and stop posting about the case. Tighten them today, before anything is disputed.
- Do not delete. Once a claim is in dispute, mass deletion of posts is its own problem and a worse look than whatever was there. Adjust privacy going forward; do not scrub the past.
Frequently asked questions
Is it legal for them to follow me?
Generally yes, from public vantage points. It feels like a violation and it mostly is not one. Where investigators cross a line is trespassing on your property, misrepresenting who they are to get access, or recording somewhere you have a reasonable expectation of privacy — and if you believe that happened, say so early, because it matters.
They have ten minutes of video. Do I get to see the rest?
You should ask for it, and you should want it. A compilation is chosen; the raw footage is not. Hours of a claimant sitting in a car or moving slowly across a parking lot often help far more than the edited highlights hurt. Ask what days were surveilled and what exists for each of them.
I was having a good day on the video. Does that finish me?
No, and this is the most common panic call. Symptoms fluctuate and the Board knows it. What matters is whether your account of your limits has consistently allowed for good days, and whether your physician will say the footage is consistent with the condition. Which brings us back to getting that report written.
My doctor will not watch the video. What then?
It happens constantly and it is not a reason to give up. Sometimes it takes a different format, a clearer explanation of the narrow question being asked, or a phone call to the right person in the office. Sometimes the answer is testimony rather than a written report. What does not work is waiting and hoping.
Can they use surveillance from before my claim?
They can offer whatever they have, including older material and social media going back years. Whether it is relevant to your condition during the period in dispute is a different question, and it is one worth contesting rather than conceding.
Does working under the table show up in this?
It is one of the main things investigators are hired to find, and it is the fastest route to a penalty application. Working while collecting benefits has its own rules, and there are circumstances where some work is permitted. Doing it without telling anyone is not one of them.
If there is video in your file
Call before the hearing, not after. 718.701.2776 or 800.310.5520. Bring whatever notice you received, and do not delete anything.
This page describes New York law in general terms. It is not legal advice about your claim, and reading it does not make us your attorneys.
Talk to a New York workers’ compensation attorney
The Law Offices of Frank J. Dito, Jr. handles workers’ compensation claims from the office on Staten Island, for injured workers throughout the five boroughs and across New York State.
Call 718.701.2776 or 800.310.5520. Consultations are free. If we don’t recover money for you, we don’t get paid.
