Alleged Fraud Ring Drives 9 to Jail

3, Staged Accidents — By Trace America on October 19, 2011 at 2:26 PM

Pennsylvania’s Erie County jail has several more inmates to take care of today. Ten people are accused, and nine were arrested, for what police are calling their roles in a staged accident ring.

According to the Erie Times-News, the Erie police stated that suspicions from an auto insurance investigator about a series of accident claims caused an investigation that has led to 10 people facing fraud charges.

The nine who were arrested on October 18^th were also charged for their parts in what police say is a ring in which insurance companies were allegedly scammed out of money for accidents that they say never took place.

Erie police Lt. John McCall said the alleged ringleader is 38-year-old Edgar Rodriguez, who is accused of making at least 21 bogus claims to various insurance companies that date back to June of 2010.

Police said the alleged scams involved seven different insurance companies, and that Rodriguez and others collected thousands of dollars in bogus claims. McCall said he launched his investigation in April after Scott Luppino, an investigator for Geico Insurance, reported some suspicious claims involving Rodriguez.

McCall noted that through further investigation into the alleged accidents, they determined that they were either staged or they didn’t happen at all.

“As time went on, a pattern emerged showing that (Rodriguez) would have one accident where he was the claimant on someone else’s insurance. The next claim or two would be on his own, where he was saying to his insurance company that someone hit-and-ran his vehicle,” McCall said.

In one of the cases, police state that Rodriguez claimed that his vehicle was vandalized while he was parked at his place of work. According to the criminal complaint filed in the case, an investigation determined that Rodriguez stopped working there a month before the alleged vandalism occurred.

Upon reviewing photos from Rodriguez’s claims, McCall noted that it appeared that the reported damage to his vehicles was either “really similar” or identical to damage that was reported in other claims.

Erie Police Chief Steve Franklin said, “It was a prolonged investigation involving tedious work. It was a tough investigation, and (McCall) did a good job with it.”

Rodriguez was arraigned on the 18^th before Erie 2^nd Ward District Judge Paul Urbaniak on 15 sets of criminal charges, including insurance fraud. He was placed in the Erie County Prison on bonds that total $75,000.

The other 8 arrestees were charged with conspiracy for their alleged roles in the scams, and each was jailed on $5,000 bond after their arraignments with Urbaniak. They are: