VA Attorney Sentenced for Life Insurance Fraud

A Leesburg attorney has been sentenced for his role in a life insurance payout scam.

According to Fairfax News, on February 24^th Christopher Agresto, 36, was sentenced to 24 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for carrying out a scheme to fraudulently obtain life insurance proceeds.

Court records state that in 2009, Susan Cilenti was found dead under suspicious circumstances in the Leesburg home she shared with her husband, James Cilenti. After the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office opened a death investigation, James Cilenti became a “person of interest.”

As a result, USAA, which had issued a $500,000 life insurance policy on the life of the late Mrs. Cilenti, declined to pay Cilenti, who was the primary beneficiary of Mrs. Cilenti’s life insurance policy. Cilenti obtained the services of Christopher Agresto, a Leesburg attorney, and together they devised a scheme to induce USAA, through materially false representations, to pay the insurance proceeds to a trust they created.

It appeared that the trust was meant to go towards the benefit of Cilenti’s adopted daughter, who was the contingent beneficiary under the policy. However, based on Agresto’s misrepresentations, which were that the funds would be spent only on the daughter’s behalf, USAA sent $507,000 to the trust account.  If only it ended there.  Instead of spending funds on the daughter’s behalf, Agresto then wrote over $450,000 in checks and wire transfers to Cilenti, who used them for his own benefit.

Agresto pled guilty on November 4, 2011.

This investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General, and the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office. On behalf f the United States, Assistant United States Attorneys Uzo Asonye and Michael Rich prosecuted the case.