The newest moguls of mayhem blew upneighborhoods, conducted painful quack surgery on healthy people,and tried to kill puppies as part of their efforts to defraudinsurers.
It's time to unveil the newest dishonorees of the InsuranceFraud Hall of Shame; the perpetrators of the year's most brazen,vicious, or just plain klutzy insurance misadventures.
|All of these extreme schemers were convicted or had other legalclosure in the last year.
|The No-Class of 2015 adds new extreme schemers to the pantheonof purloining created by the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. Thenewest moguls of mayhem blew up neighborhoods, conducted painfulquack surgery on healthy people, and tried to kill puppies as partof their efforts to defraud insurers.
|Recounting such real-life cases helps to shape public opinionagainst fraud and deter would-be fraudsters while building greatersocietal intolerance of the crime. The shamers thus publicly brandinsurance fraud as a deviant crime and dead-end street.
|Read: 12 worst financial advisors of2015
|Their plots attract consumer attention in an era of extrememessage overload. Consumers are exposed to about 360 ads per day,receive 93 emails and spend 593 minutes a day on various media.Typical social-media users also consume 285 pieces of contentdaily. That's 54,000 words, and as many as 1,000 clickable linksplus about 443 minutes of video.
|Read: Citigroup to pay $180 million over hedge fundfraud
|The shamers are highly clickable, year in and year out. Here arethis year's entrants to the Hall of Shame.
|
Mark Leonard
|Stuck with gambling habits and debts, Leonard wanted to burndown his home for a $300,000 insurance payday.
|He botched the plot.
|The gasoline and escaping natural gas he built up exploded likea drone strike.
|The blast leveled much of the Indianapolis subdivision, causingcausing $5 million in damage.
|It was one of the most-violent insurance arsons in U.S.history.
|Dion and Jennifer Longworth lived next door. Jennifer died whenthe second floor pancaked, and Dion was burned alive in thebasement.
|Dozens of other neighbors were injured. Leonard received lifewithout parole.
|Related: 5 steps businesses can take to fight fraud
||
Mikhail Zemlyansky
|Fraud fighters took down the largest no-fault auto scheme evercharged. It was an attempted $279 million thievery from autoinsurers.
|Zemlyansky's fraud cartel made dodgy injury claims involvingreal and phantom car wrecks in the New York City area. Mostoperatives were of Russian descent.
|Among his gang members were 10 doctors and three lawyers helpingto run an archipelago of sham clinics.
|Patients were given rubber-stamped “modality treatments” whichincluded physical therapy or acupuncture, often up to five times aweek for each patient.
|Zemlyansky's gang also billed insurers for fake crashes.Personal injury lawyers sued insurers after coaching patients onhow to mimic symptoms of injuries. Most of his gang pleadedguilty.
|Zemlyansky awaits sentencing and could receive a century inprison. (See the September 2015 issue of Claims for the full storyon Zemlyansky.)
|Related: From pasha to prisoner: The story of MikhailZemlyansky
|
Gloria Lee
|Bankrupt and needing cash, the Las Vegas pet-shop owner tried toburn alive 27 terrified puppies locked in their cages.
|Incredibly, her own security cameras recorded the nighttimeaction.
|She teamed up with her lover, Kirk Bills, who she let into thestore via the back door according to the security footage.
|He spread gasoline from red cans around the store –and coatedthe locked cages full of cringing puppies.
|She tried to frame her husband for the deed and file a $100,000insurance claim.
|Luckily the fire fizzled. Lee received up to 14 years in prisonand Bills up to a decade.
|Related: Insureds still feel it's okay to be dishonest onclaims
||
Martin Pang
|His business in Seattle was struggling, so Pang started awarehouse insurance blaze that killed four fire fighters.
|Walter Kilgore, James Brown, Gregory Shoemaker, and RandyTerlicker died when the floor collapsed and they were thrown intothe burning basement.
|Seven other fire fighters just managed to escape a similarfate.
|Pang then took thievery to new heights.
|From inside the penitentiary he supposedly tried to steal theidentities of the investigators in his case, although he was notcriminally charged.
|A court ruled in April that he must repay nearly $1 million tothe families of the fire fighters. Pang had earlier received 35years in prison.
|Related: 15 states and metro areas most vulnerable to IDtheft and credit card fraud
||
Jose Urena
|An NYPD cop who took an oath to defend the law, insteadroutinely broke it in serial fashion. Driving a Mercedes-Benzesdrained Urena's bank accounts, so he launched a spree of false autoclaims. Among them:
|Urena lied that someone had vandalized his leased ML350. He usedthe insurance money to repair pre-existing damage.
|Urena then reported the car stolen the day before his leaseexpired. He had a cohort burn it, and cashed another insurancecheck for phantom repairs.
|His next Mercedes proved too expensive so he rear-ended aU-Haul, trying to convince his insurer to declare the car a totalloss. A Dodge Charger came after that.
|Urena was involved in a crash and made an inflated claim forpre-existing damage. He could spend up to three years in prisonwhen sentenced.
|Related: Newstudy to provide benchmarking data on anti-fraud efforts
||
Stephen Krawitz
|Dozens of mostly elderly and low-income clients urgently neededinsurance settlements that Krawitz had negotiated for them, but theManhattan personal-injury lawyer stole their money–more than $1.9million worth.
|One victim was a 96-year-old great-grandmother who hurt hershoulder in a car crash.
|Krawitz also stole $65,000 from Robert Rough, who was dying ofcancer. A car crash left him with severe nerve damage in his hands,costing him his business.
|Rough died without receiving any money.
|Meanwhile, Krawitz lived in a $2-million home and sent his kidsto private school.
|Krawitz will be schooled in a jail cell since he received up to12 years in state prison.
|Related: How mobile voice technology supports efficientinsurance fraud investigations
||
Dr. Aria Sabit
|Patients received useless and painful spinal surgeries so aneurosurgeon could steal $11 million from insurers.
|The Detroit doctor convinced many patients to get spinal fusionsurgeries they didn't need. Sabit did surgeries on nearly everyonewho walked into his clinic.
|The pain continued long after a bungled surgery for somepatients. He also sliced open and closed some patients withoutdoing any repair work at all.
|Tonocca Scott must wear a back brace with a DVD case tapedinside to keep his spine straight.
|He can sit for only a few minutes and has placed his dream of acomputer-technology career on hold.
|A repeat offender, Sabit pulled a similar scam in California,where he implanted unneeded devices and performed unnecessarysurgery. Sabit could spend up to 11 years in federal prison whensentenced.
|Related: The hard problem of soft fraud
||
Jose Lantigua
|Vacationing in his native Venezuela proved fatal, at leastaccording to Jose Lantigua's death certificate.
|He supposedly died from an illness and was cremated there,except the Jacksonville, Florida, resident bribed bureaucrats toissue forged death documents in a fumbled plot to fake his deathfor approximately $9 million in life insurance.
|He sought a passport using a North Carolina driver license inthe name of a postal worker whose identity he had stolen.
|Lantigua's height, eyes, hair color and other identifiers weresignificantly different from Ernest Wills, Lantigua's victim.
|The fraudster will spend up to 12 years in prison whensentenced.
|Related: Fighting fraud with metadata
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Theresa Fisher & Lindsay Hardgraves
|Fisher and Hardgraves ran a surgery center in Orange County,California. Insurers were billed $71 million, much of it foruninsured plastic surgery charged as legitimate medicaltreatment.
|Over $50 million was paid to the women before the fraudulentscheme was discovered.
|They bribed patients with tummy tucks, breast enlargements andliposuction.
|The tradeoff: The patients underwent insured surgeries theydidn't need–endoscopies, colonoscopies and others.
|Tummy tucks were billed as hernia operations. Nose jobs weredeviated septums.
|Patients were also coached on how to fake symptoms and foilinsurers.
|Fisher received three years in federal prison and Hardgravesfive months.
|Related: Kingpin runners: Masters of fraud
||
William Worthy
|More than 17,000 trusting consumers thought they'd boughtlegitimate health insurance only to find out it was fake.
|The South Carolina-based Worthy erected a large network of fakehealth insurers geared solely to steal premiums.
|It was one of the largest such scams in U.S. history.
|The ring stole up to $28 million in premiums, even fleecingchurch pastors with a bogus insurance plan.
|Consumers were often left with huge medical bills they had topay themselves–more than $7 million total.
|Worthy's unlicensed insurers routinely denied legitimate claims.He used the customer premiums to support a princely lifestyle andwill possibly spend decades in federal prison when sentenced.
|Related: Insurance agents are on the front linesagainst workers' comp fraud
||
Pierre Collins
|The Minneapolis-area man beat his 10-year-old son, Barway, todeath and then duct-taped his body and tossed him into theMississippi River like cordwood for just $50,000 in life-insurancemoney.
|Collins had paid the premiums just two days before Barwaydisappeared and he had also asked the insurer about raising thecoverage on Barway from $30,000 to $50,000.
|For Collins, that was the market price of a child's life.
|He owed child support for multiple children and was unemployed.Cell-phone pings placed him near the spot where Barway's body wasfound.
|After denying that he had nothing to do with his son'sdisappearance, he confessed earlier this year. Collins received 40years in prison.
|These convicted Hall of Shamers are helping to brand insurancefraud as a crime that society should oppose with greater resolve.And they are publicly positioning fraud fighters as effective crimebusters intent on shining a light on a crime that impactseveryone.
|Related: The cartel connection: Linking insurance fraud,drug cartels and terrorism
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