Miami Adjusters Arrested in Fraud Ring

Five insurance insiders have found themselves arrested for their alleged roles in several insurance fraud schemes in Miami-Dade County.

According to NBC Miami, the arrests of five former Allstate and State Farm adjusters stemmed from an investigation last year that busted 26 individuals who allegedly participated in schemes where vehicle owners conspired with auto shops to scam insurance companies out of more than $5 million dollars.

“According to authorities, in order to avoid payments on financed vehicles, the vehicle owner stages a crash and takes the vehicle to a repair shop, where the shop causes further damage to the vehicle, namely tampering with the airbag so that it appears it deployed during the crash, which ups the claim amount.”

The investigation was led last year by the Hialeah Police Auto Theft Unit, Miami-Dade Auto Theft Task Force and the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The scheme began to unravel when authorities busted auto shop owner, Jose Diaz of High Performance Auto Services, for billing insurance companies for repairs never rendered to deployed airbags.  Diaz then later agreed to cooperate with officials and video tape adjusters accepting kickbacks.

Arrested were former Allstate employees, Roman Hernandez, Eduardo Quinonez, and Roy Stella and former State Farm employees, Jeremazine Kirland and Julio Ravelo.  All five suspects have been accused of accepting kickbacks from Hialeah area auto mechanics for inflated auto accident claims and face various charges for third-degree grand theft and RICO charges (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations).

State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle held a press conference last week stating that this was the first time she could remember employees of insurance companies having been involved in such a scam and expressed her ultimate feelings of disappointment and betrayal towards those who were involved:

“They betrayed their employers, they betrayed their colleagues and the betrayed the consumers of South Florida,” she said. “Ultimately, all of us.”

Fortunately, as State Attorney Fernandez expressed, this is a very uncommon story and basically unheard of in the insurance claims industry. As always, we emphasize that these are allegations at this point and nothing has been proven in a court of law.