Contractor Arrested for Premium Fraud

Fraud investigators from the CDI Criminal Investigations Branch’s Fraud Division and the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office arrested Thomas Turner, 57, of Fremont, Calif. The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office filed a criminal complaint charging Turner with three felony counts of premium fraud and three counts of grand theft.

A joint investigation was conducted into allegations that Turner had failed to report his payroll to his workers’ comp insurance carrier, State Compensation Insurance Fund. The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office and CDI discovered during the investigation that from March 1999 to Jan. 2000, Turner was the sole owner of the San Mateo County Roofing Services. Turner was a licensed roofing contractor and during this period, Turner provided roofing labor and materials to many homeowners. Turner hired employees to perform the roofing work and paid them with cash as well as company checks. The sum of the contracts totaled at least $268,722.

He supposedly issued payroll checks under the names of his roofing crew supervisors, who then allegedly cashed the checks in order to make cash payments to all crewmembers. A SCIF auditor determined that Turner owed between $34,279 and $80,879 in premiums due to allegedly reporting no payroll on his quarterly reports to SCIF.

Bail was set at $200,000. The case is being prosecuted by the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.