Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame Inducts 9 Scammers

December 11, 2018

The Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame has inducted nine new members.

The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, a group of insurance, consumers and government organizations, reported the following inductees:

  1. Burning desire. Two firefighters died when a brick wall fell on them as they fought an arson fire. Thu Hong Nguyen set the blaze to burn her nail salon for insurance money in Kansas City, Mo.
  2. Driven to steal. A vast fraud ring run by Felix Filenger stole fully $23 million for bogus whiplash injury claims from real and setup car crashes in South Florida.
  3. Bribes for blood. The largest doctor bribery scheme in U.S. history saw chiropractor David Nicoll stealing more than $100 million. He bribed at least 38 corrupt doctors for false testing of blood samples in Parsippany, N.J.
  4. Toddler killer. Erica White poisoned her blind and deaf toddler Tyrael McFall to death for $50,000 of life insurance in the Atlanta area.
  5. Maladjusted adjuster. Public adjuster Jorge Fausto Espinosa burned and flooded dozens of homes for $14 million of inflated claims in South Florida. Damage was rigged to look like electrical problems, kitchen accidents and faulty water lines.
  6. Home arsonist floored. Firefighter Patrick Wolterman died when he fell through a seared floor while combating an insurance arson set by Billy Lester Parker and Billy Tucker in Hamilton, Ohio.
  7. Pain for profit. Homeless people were inflicted with painful and unneeded spinal injections. Detroit-area streets also were flooded with more than 4 million painkillers in a $300-million Medicare plot by Dr. Mishiyat Rashid.
  8. Unsober sober homes. Yury Baumblit ran unsafe flophouses that housed homeless people and addicts in the New York City area. He pushed many into unneeded drug rehab, forced some to take drugs, and evicted anyone who didn’t cooperate.
  9. Money addiction. Kirsten Wallace co-owned a corrupt sober home that stole the identities of addicts to overbill insurers in a $175-million insurance crime. It was one of the largest health-insurance plots in California history.

While much of insurance fraud goes unreported, at least $80 billion in fraudulent claims are made annually in the U.S., the CAIF estimates.

Source: CAIF