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Owners of Top Flight Insurance charged with conspiracy, racketeering

Charges of conspiracy against the state, racketeering and filing of false financial statements in relation to the operation of an insurance company were brought against two Texans by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s office in late October.

Jimmy Warren Wolff, 61, and Rodney Alfred Williams, 73, are accused of inflating their assets in an attempt to keep their insurance business open prior to 2005 when the state insurance department placed their auto insurance company, Top Flight Insurance, into receivership. The charges were filed in Oklahoma County District Court by the AG’s Workers’ Compensation and Insurance Fraud Unit.

Wolff and Williams, controlling owners of Oklahoma-based Top Flight, each were charged with one felony count of conspiracy against the state, nine felony counts of filing a false financial statement and one felony count of racketeering.

The two are alleged to have regularly transferred money from a second company they controlled, TriUnion, in an attempt to make Top Flight Insurance appear to be a solvent company in annual and quarterly reports filed with the Oklahoma Insurance Department. The state says the two men filed false reports on nine occasions between December 2002 and December 2004.

Edmondson said in announcing the charges that the company likely would have been found to be insolvent earlier had it not been for the false paperwork filed by the pair. He said it is believed that Wolff and Williams took in almost $4 million in premiums during the time in question.

According to the AG, the pair bolstered the Top Flight books by issuing a check from TriUnion to the company before filing Top Flight’s paperwork with the insurance department. The next day, the money would be transferred back to TriUnion.

Williams and Wolff also are accused of falsely reporting their real estate holdings to further support their financial standing with the insurance department. The company allegedly purchased 66 properties valued at $614,395, but the recorded value listed in Top Flight’s ledger for these properties was $10,500,000.

“This company was shut down by the insurance department in 2005,” Edmondson said. “Prior to that, consumers who relied on Top Flight for insurance coverage were unknowingly working without a net. In the case of a large-scale disaster, this company would not have had the financial holdings to cover all the assets it insured.”

Oklahoma Insurance Com-missioner Kim Holland in May 2005 placed Top Flight into permanent receivership, saying the company appeared to be insolvent by approximately $3.5 million. It was ordered write no new policies in Oklahoma. Holland said at the time Top Flight would go immediately into liquidation as “there was no hope of salvaging the company.”

Also placed into receivership and liquidation in 2005 was Source General Agency Inc. a managing general agent that represented Top Flight and carried out its business in Oklahoma.