Federal prosecutors finish case against former sheriff’s deputy in $650,000 fraud trial

After federal prosecutors rested their case Tuesday, the wife of a former Spokane County sheriff’s deputy testified that she was unaware that her husband was receiving about $5,000 a month in disability payments that the government claims he wasn’t entitled to receive.

Donald B. Henderson Jr., of Spokane, faces four criminal charges that he defrauded both the Social Security and Veteran Benefits administrations of more than $650,000 after he claimed he suffers from an eye condition that leaves him legally blind. He worked a few years in the early 1990s for the sheriff’s office and began receiving 100 percent disability payments in 2002.

Also indicted in the case was his wife, Tamara Henderson, who remains on administrative leave from her job of 15 years as an industry-operations investigator for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. She had been charged with failing to report the theft of the disability payments to her husband, but federal prosecutors dismissed the case just before the trial that started Sept. 11.

On Tuesday, she broke down several times as she described the debilitating migraine headaches that her husband has endured since she met him in the U.S. Army in 1985.

“I’d say he’d have a real bad one every two weeks,” she said. “He would work all week and he would just collapse on the weekends.”

Henderson suffered a traumatic brain injury during a motorcycle crash in 1984 while he was serving in the Army. As a result of the reoccurring migraine headaches, his vision fluctuates to the point that he eventually lost his license to drive in 2001.

The wife said the family hasn’t taken a vacation since 1998 because Henderson doesn’t know when the next episode will occur. It left him unable to keep his dream job as a deputy and later an investigator for the Washington State Gambling Commission, she said.

The wife, and two of the Henderson’s children, said Henderson hides from the light, presses his fingers into his eyes to help focus to read, and is someone who suffered addictions and depression from the medications doctors prescribed to deal with his pain.

“He doesn’t want to be bedridden. He wants to help his family,” Tamara Henderson said. “I just don’t know how bad it’s going to get or what it leads to.”

But prosecutors pointed out that Donald Henderson wrote nothing about the migraine headaches, or fluctuating vision, when he filled out paperwork in 2002 to receive disability payments. In that application, it claims that he suffers from a thinning of the cornea – which the government does not dispute – that leaves him with permanent vision problems that would render him legally blind.

“He’s telling these doctors he can only see a couple feet in front of him,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Lister said in court. “He says he can’t garden, he can’t shoot … but there are videos of him doing those very things.”

Witnesses testified that Donald Henderson not only rode a motorcycle, he popped wheelies down the street. He took several trips with a friend riding ATV, until he crashed twice and sold his machine. Federal investigators sent in an undercover agent who went shooting with Henderson. He was able to see where the agent’s bullets hit a target and then shot it himself.

“He didn’t report good days. He stole the money from the” Social Security Administration, Lister said.

Asked about the ATV riding, Tamara Henderson said she was fearful for her husband, who she said only went out seven or eight times.

“He planned to go more often, but several weekends he had to cancel because he wasn’t feeling up to it,” she said. “I did worry but I knew he would be off-road and not be putting anyone else in danger.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Cashman asked the wife about the family finances.

“Do you know the total you receive a month” from federal disability payments? “More than $1,000. Close to $5,000?” Cashman said.

“I don’t know,” Tamara Henderson said.

The family received federal money to help pay for a child’s education; to update the home to make it easier to Donald Henderson to get around; and Cashman said the Veterans Administration helped pay for the family’s Ford Focus.

“I just may not remember that,” Tamara Henderson said. “I didn’t know (Ford Focus) was paid for by the VA.”

Donald Henderson received a medal for marksmanship in the Army and the family often went shooting together, she said. The couple also went to several movies.

“I’m not sure what he could see or couldn’t see when we went,” she said.

Deputy Federal Defender Colin Prince asked U.S. District Court Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson to dismiss the case because he said the government failed to show that Henderson committed the crimes.

“He’s being blamed for not coming forward and explaining that his traumatic brain injury is causing these problems,” Prince said. “If the (Social Security Administration) determines that they made an erroneous determination, they can take that up in administrative court. But it’s not a crime.”