A young man named Leroy Barnes was arrested in Los Angeles this week on insurance fraud charges, accused of collecting state disability benefits for over a year while still employed.
Why should you care?
Because Barnes, 27, is best known as one of the dancing hamsters in a series of recent Kia car commercials. In fact, his performances in those ads helped convince state investigators that he had committed insurance fraud. Exhibit A is below:
According to the California Department of Insurance, Barnes was injured in 2010 while employed as a dancer for John Cossette Productions and he received more than $51,000 in disability benefits from the state through September 2011. He claimed to have been unemployed the entire time but was actually quite busy, dancing in those Kia ads, performing in a rap group called The Rej3ctz and working as a backup dancer for Madonna, Kelly Rowland and others.
Barnes is suspected of decieving his doctors about his employments status while receiving benefits.
I prefer to remember him this way:
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