Crossfit cross-training leads to sheriff’s deputy’s arrest
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An Orange County, California, sheriff’s deputy was under a doctor’s orders not to lift more than 10 pounds after allegedly suffering a workplace injury, but 36-year-old Nicholas Zappas was caught pumping up to 200 pounds of iron and doing burpees, squats and box jumps.
The fitness world calls it Crossfit; prosecutors call it fraud.
Nicholas Zappas, a 16-year veteran of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, was arrested Oct. 21 and charged with 11 felony counts of insurance fraud and seven felony counts of perjury under oath, according to a statement from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office issued that same day. The maximum sentence is 16 years.
Prosecutors say Mr. Zappas failed to disclose his true physical abilities and activities to his doctors when he filed a workers’ compensation insurance claim for injuries to his left shoulder, left side of his neck and lower back after tripping over a firehouse and falling on his back in 2015. After he complained of pain, a doctor placed him on work restrictions of no lifting, pushing or pulling anything greater than 10 pounds. To accommodate his physical limitations, his supervisors assigned him to a desk job.
Meanwhile, he was receiving funds from an insurance payout and partaking in the rigorous exercise routine called Crossfit, a popular high-impact fitness fad that calls for body-weight exercises and Olympic-level weightlifting.
He did not tell his doctors about his fitness routine, which was allegedly caught on video and discovered by the county in May 2015. In December 2015, Mr. Zappas allegedly lied
under oath during a deposition by denying that he had lifted more than 20 pounds since his injury. However, prosecutors discovered via an investigation that he had been active in Crossfit between January 2016 and May 2016.
No court date has been set, according to the district attorney’s office.
