Fla. Pays $15,000 to Fraud Tipster

Florida Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher authorized a $15,000 reward to be paid to a Miami man who provided state insurance fraud investigators with information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of a medical clinic owner who orchestrated a Personal Injury Protection (PIP) fraud scheme.

The award recipient alerted fraud investigators that Carlos Manzano, manager of Medical Institute, was involved in a scheme to bill insurance companies for services never rendered, such as MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging).

Manzano allegedly solicited accident victims who would allow phony treatments to be billed to their PIP coverage. He also orchestrated the staging of auto crashes in order to collect false insurance proceeds. Without the assistance of the confidential informant, Manzano could have fraudulently collected more than $100,000.

As part of a pre-trial agreement, Manzano was ordered to pay nearly $10,000 in restitution in 2003.

Florida law requires drivers to carry a minimum of $10,000 in PIP coverage and $10,000 in property damage liability coverage. PIP coverage provides up to $10,000 per victim for medical bills, regardless of who is at fault.

The department recently hired a dedicated prosecutor to handle the increasing number of PIP fraud cases in South Florida. The prosecutor will be based in Miami, where the department’s Division of Insurance Fraud has made nearly 600 PIP fraud arrests since 1999, representing nearly 60 percent of all insurance fraud arrests in that region.