Fugitive Insurance Con Hauled Before Judge: 10 Year Sentence Affirmed

Bridgette Buckner, a con artist who has been convicted of insurance fraud, was finally in court to stand in front of a judge after being on the run for over a month. Buckner was sentenced to 10 years in prison back in September, but she vanished shortly before her court appearance once she got out on bail.

According to the Naperville Sun, she was in court this time around on October 13^th when a DuPage County judge abruptly rejected her request to modify the prison sentence. The scam that will cost her a decade of her life involved the life insurance policies from her husband and two children. She collected $70,000 by twice claiming her FBI-agent husband and two children had died –when her husband was neither an FBI agent nor dead, and was in fact just estranged from her.

Buckner was arrested last week by U.S. Marshals in Elgin, where she has relatives, and returned to DuPage County. Her attorney asked the judge, John Kinsella, to reconsider the sentence that he set for the 50-year-old Buckner, stating that she needed counseling, not prison.

Kinsella quickly refused, noting that Buckner not only carried out the frauds but she also added insult to injury by disappearing before her sentencing.

“The defendant chose to attempt to evade sentencing and to attempt to evade punishment,” Kinsella said as he re-affirmed her initial 10-year prison sentence.

He also criticized her for her “over-the-top audacity” in repeatedly trying to cash in on the supposed deaths of her husband and two children.

“The defendant’s conduct was particularly egregious because of what she was willing to do,” Kinsella said.

Buckner likely will apparently spend about five of those years behind bars, though she also faces identity theft and fraud charges from Cook County.