Q’orianka Kilcher Charged With Fraud After Allegedly Collecting $100k In Work Comp Benefits
‘Yellowstone’ star Q’orianka Kilcher has been hit with two felony counts of workers’ compensation fraud after collecting nearly $100k in benefits despite being allegedly healthy enough to work on the hit TV series.
Q’orianka Kilcher, an actress best known for her role as Angela Blue Thunder on Yellowstone, is facing some serious allegations. Q’orianka, 32, allegedly collected $96,838 in benefits after injuring her neck and shoulder while filming Dora and the Lost City of Gold, per Variety. However, investigators with the California Department of Insurance claim that she worked on Yellowstone the following year after the injury, during a time that she claimed she was disabled. On Monday (July 11), the department announced it had charged Kilcher with two counts of workers’ compensation fraud and that she was “as arraigned and pleaded not guilty on May 27.”
Q’orianka “never intentionally accepted benefits that she did not believe she was entitled to,” her attorney, Michael Becker, told Variety. She denied the allegations and said that she would “vigorously defend herself and asks that she be afforded the presumption of innocence both in and outside the courthouse.”
In Dora, Q’orianka played Inca princess Kawillaka. Variety reports that Kilcher allegedly hurt her neck and right shoulder while filming the movie in October 2018. The Department of Insurance claimed that she went to a doctor a few times afterward, per Variety, but “stopped getting treatment and did not respond to an inquiry from her employer’s insurance company.” In October 2019, she reportedly reached out to the insurer to seek treatment and allegedly told a doctor that her neck pain had become so severe that she had to turn down jobs (and that she hadn’t worked for a year.)
Investigators discovered that Q’orianka had worked on Yellowstone from July 2019 to October 2019, just before she sought treatment. The Yellowstone job ended five days before she started collecting benefits, per the Department of Insurance. The doctor handling the case reportedly said they would have never approved the disability benefits payments had they known of Kilcher’s recent work history.
“Third-party doctors verified her injury and entitlement to benefits,” her attorney said in the statement. “Ms. Kilcher was at all times candid with her doctors and treatment providers.” She currently has a scheduled court date on Aug. 7.
In addition to her roles in Yellowstone and Dora and the Lost City of Gold, Q’orianka Kilcher appeared in 2005’s The New World, 2020’s Color Out of Space, and 2022’s Dog.