All Hail This Georgia Official Who Went Out on Maternity Leave With a Fake Pregnancy Belly, Non-Existent Baby and Fictional Husband

It sounds oxymoronic, but there are times when it takes more effort to avoid work than it takes to simply do what you're paid to do. A lot of people have had a lot of jobs, but I honestly feel like I've had more separate and unrelated careers than anyone I've ever met. And the one constant in all of them was that, in every workplace big or small, there was somebody who was willing to burn as many calories as it took in order to not do their job. Who put all their effort into not putting out effort. So that every task, no matter how trivial, degenerated into a discussion about why that's a problem, rather than give in and simply take care of it. 

Well there's those people, and then there's Robin Folsom of the Georgia State Inspector General's office. Perhaps never before has anyone gone to such effort in order to get out of doing a thing. 

Source -  A former Georgia official faked being pregnant so she could take paid maternity leave — but her scheme came apart when a co-worker noticed her baby bump was bogus, officials said.

Robin Folsom, 43, also allegedly made up a fake baby daddy to send an email to her bosses that said she was under doctor’s orders for several weeks of bed rest after giving birth in May 2021, the Georgia Office of the Inspector General announced this week.

The birth-that-wasn’t came two months after a co-worker ... saw part of Folsom’s fake pregnancy stomach “come away” from her body, according to a news release from the IG’s office.

Folsom, director of external affairs for the agency, sent her co-workers photos of her supposed newborn, but they “depicted children with varying skin tones,” the release stated.

The father of her child, Bran Otmembebwe, was a made-up person, but Folsom, when pressed by investigators in October 2021, doubled down and said he really existed, the indictment against her says.

Folsom had informed the agency that she gave birth once before, in July 2020, and got pregnant again in August 2021. But the IG found there were no official records of Folsom having given birth and her insurance records didn’t indicate any pregnancy or delivery.

And the best part? Let's make that, the most ironic part? Is that this is how the mission of the IG's office is described on its own website:

The State of Georgia Office of the Inspector General promotes transparency and accountability in state government. OIG diligently investigates fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption in the executive branch.

And it's hard to imagine anyone more qualified to root out fraud, waste, abuse and corruption than the director of external affairs who's spent months pretending to have a gestating fetus, a baby and a sperm donor that were in reality a pillow, some Shutterstock photos, and the fake name "Bran Otmembebwe," that I'm pretty sure is an anagram for "Me Rent Womb Babe." 

I mean, talk about commitment to a bit. This is like something Elain Benes would pull to get out of doing the J Peterman Fall Catalogue. Except Robin Folsom hung onto the lie like Costanza driving his in-laws out to a non-existent house in the Hamptons because they wouldn't stop calling his bluff. 

Think about how badly you want a couple of months off to create two entirely fictitious human beings. Jan Brady made up George Glass:

… and that ruse didn't last a day before it all came crashing down around her. And the Brady's were an architect and his family of naive, innocent rubes. They weren't the very people empowered to root out frauds and scams in their very branch of the Georgia government. The very idea Robin thought she could pull this off is something to be admired. This is what is meant by the audacity of hope. In fact, I'm so impressed, I might even support the idea of letting her keep the money and give her her old job back. Just as long as they keep a few spare EPT kits around the office in case she tries to pull this gag a second time. 

But who are we kidding? With a willingness to lie like this and put this kind of effort into making people believe it, she'll be President someday. She's already become the Queen of my heart.