A local mayor who’s been accused of insurance fraud has been bound over to District Court after a judge found there was sufficient evidence he allegedly lied to insurance agents about the price of his boat.
David Dwyane Price, 62, was sworn in as mayor of Spencer on Jan. 26, and on Feb. 13, charges were filed against him for one felony count of insurance fraud.
According to court documents, Price filed a claim with his insurance company, the Idaho Farm Bureau, for damages to his 2006 Northwest Jet Boat on April 29, 2024. A repair estimate from Precision Inc. to the Farm Bureau totaled $149,793.20, and the insurance company determined the boat was a total loss.
Farm Bureau offered Price a settlement option with an all-cash value of $110,000, and the agency would keep the boat.
A handwritten bill of sale was sent to a Farm Bureau agent stating that Price bought the boat for $215,000 on Jan. 12, 2022.
A special investigator for the insurance company discovered additional documentation from the Idaho Department of Motor Vehicles showing the boat was purchased for $20,000. The original owner of the boat was also contacted, and he told the investigator he had sold it to Price for $86,500.
Arguments made during Price’s preliminary hearing
During Tuesday’s preliminary hearing, the state, represented by Deputy Attorney General Sam Camp, introduced five witnesses who testified about Price’s insurance policy and corroborated the findings in the court documents.
Price’s defense attorney, Ronald Swafford, argued that the allegations against Price were a disaster due to errors and what he believes is a lack of knowledge about the boat’s true value.
“If you go through the file, you’ll find that it talks about two or three different boats, two or three different VIN numbers, the values of which are without a basis or a foundation, and then offers opinions on values that weren’t for a custom-made boat,” Swafford said. “It’s a conglomeration of errors and mistakes all the way through.”
Throughout the hearing, Swafford attacked the complaint filed against Price, arguing that the boat’s listed year, 2006, was incorrect and that the evidence presented to the witnesses showed a different year for the boat.
The boat at the heart of this issue is a 2005 Northwest Jet boat.
The other area in which Swafford took issue with the state’s defense was the bill of sale provided to the Idaho Farm Bureau.
During the testimony of the first witness, insurance agent Riley Jeppesen said that when Price first filed the claim, a bill of sale was required to establish the boat’s value.
While he testified that he did not know who had dropped off the bill of sale, he had obtained one with Price’s name on it and had previously encouraged Price to submit one.
Swafford argues that Price never intended to defraud anyone, but rather to show that the boat was worth $215,000 and to hope that the insurance policy he had on the boat would pay out $150,000.
“All he was asking for was for Farm Bureau to honor the policy and pay 150,000 to fix his boat,” Swafford said.
Swafford also argued that the value given by Farm Bureau was not accurate to the “real” value of Price’s boat.
One of the points he made was that the use of CCCOne, an estimation software used by Farm Bureau, only showed values for “assembly line boats” or “fabricated” boats, and nothing regarding custom modifications.
“(Farm Bureau) haven’t even come close to this to give you any figure of what that boat was worth to show that anything was fraudulent,” Swafford said. “We don’t know what it was worth.”
Deputy Attorney General Sam Camp argued that the main issue is not the boat’s value but the actions allegedly committed by Price while interacting with Jeppesen.
“He submitted a document to the insurance company for $215,000 on one occasion, and another occasion for the DMV. I’m assuming, I guess, to maybe avoid some taxes, a claim that he paid $20,000 for the boat,” Camp said.
The final witness for the state, Aaron Eckert, testified about selling the boat to Price in January 2022.
Eckert said he had sold the boat to Price for $86,500 and that the handwritten bill of sale given to the DMV was in someone else’s handwriting, not his.
“This is not my handwriting on there,” Eckert said. “Someone else wrote out the details of what was done, I think, after the fact.”
Judge’s decision
Magistrate Judge Wiley Dennert told the two attorneys that, under Idaho Code and case law governing preliminary hearings, the state need not prove the defendant guilty. The state needs only to prove, under a reasonable view of the evidence and any allowable inferences, that a defendant likely committed the offense.
Looking at the allegations in the complaint, which state that on or about July 31, 2024, Price submitted documentation alleging he paid $215,000 for the boat, when what was presented proved otherwise.
The evidence given to the DMV stated that he paid $20,000 for the boat, and Eckert’s statement that he had sold the boat to Price for $86,500.
“The defendant David Wayne Price did in fact submit a false statement to his insurance company that he had paid $215,000 for the boat when he had not paid that amount,” Dennert said.
Price is scheduled for his arraignment in District Court at 8:45 a.m. on July 20 before District Judge Stevan Thompson or Michael Whyte.
Though Price has been charged with this crime, it does not necessarily mean he committed it. Everyone is presumed innocent until they are proven guilty.
