Arrest - InsuranceFraud.org

A Bothell man has been added to Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler’s Insurance Fraud Most Wanted list.

Clinton Jonathan ‘Sonny’ Behrends failed to appear at his arraignment after being charged by the King County Prosecutor’s Office with two counts of first-degree identity theft and one count of first-degree theft. A bench warrant was issued for his arrest on August 24.

On July 2, 2021, the Insurance Commissioner’s Criminal Investigations Unit received a phone call from one of Behrends’ former clients. The client stated that he was injured in a serious vehicle collision in 2017, after which he hired Clinton Behrends as legal representation.

In 2019, the client went online and learned that USAA had settled his claim in 2018 for $150,000. The client contacted Behrends about the settlement, and Behrends offered to pay him $7,000.

The client said they had agreed to him receiving $100,000 with Behrends receiving $50,000 for representation, and Behrends’ later offer was unacceptable. Behrends paid the client $6,000 but absconded with $94,000.

CIU opened an investigation and discovered Behrends had forged the client’s signature. Detectives obtained a search warrant for Behrends’ bank records and found he had received a check from USAA for $150,000 in July 2018. Behrends then transferred most of the money to his own personal account.

Behrends was investigated by the Washington State Bar Association and surrendered his license to practice law in lieu of being disbarred.

If you have information that may lead to the arrest of Clinton Jonathan Behrends, please contact your local law enforcement agency or contact Kreidler’s Criminal Investigations Unit (CIU).

CIU investigates insurance fraud and works with allied law enforcement agencies and state and local prosecutors on criminal cases. Insurance fraud costs the average family $400 to $700 per year in increased premiums. Insurance companies are required by law to report fraud to the commissioner.

Five residents of Broward and Palm Beach County are among seven people accused in a nearly $100 million scheme that defrauded workers’ compensation insurers through shell companies, state officials announced Wednesday.

The investigation, conducted by the Broward Sheriff’s Office and Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, began in December 2024 after a BSO Money Laundering Task Force detective learned that a company called JYK Construction Concrete Inc. with an address in West Palm Beach was a shell company processing payrolls for several general contractors in Broward, Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties, according to probable cause affidavits.

Shortly after the investigation began, detectives identified nine more shell construction companies with the same West Palm Beach address and discovered they were all allegedly part of a “family criminal enterprise,” according to multiple probable cause affidavits in cases filed in Palm Beach County court last month.

Attorney General James Uthmeier announced in a news release Wednesday the seven people facing charges in connection with the scheme are: Marlen Suazo Gutierrez, 56, of West Palm Beach; Gustavo Lara Suazo, 37, of Lake Worth Beach; Eduardo Blandon Martinez, 56, of West Palm Beach; Alejandra Lagos Matute, 33, of Lake Worth Beach; Erick Blandon, 26, of Port St. Lucie; Blanca Ramirez Farina, 30, of Deerfield Beach; and Eduardo Olivera Leal, 56, of Ocala.

In the scheme, the shell companies were used to obtain workers’ compensation insurance policies by “significantly” underreporting their number of employees and their payroll amount, the Attorney General’s Office news release said.

In workers’ compensation fraud schemes, companies are created and obtain minimal workers’ compensation insurance and employers’ liability policies and then offer the company names and certificates of insurance to be “rented” to other uninsured subcontractors to use for a fee, according to the affidavits.

“This allows payroll to pass through the ‘shell companies’ undetected, as it is never reported to any entity for any purpose,” the affidavits said.

The family enterprise in the scheme “rented” their certificates of insurance to uninsured subcontractors for a fee and allegedly processed and cashed the contractors’ payroll checks through an unlicensed money service business, including for workers who were undocumented immigrants and people living in the country illegally, according to the news release.

“Physical surveillance established that the defendants worked and operated from the same location to process payroll checks and distribute cash directly to workers,” the Attorney General’s Office said. “Over the course of the investigation, nearly $100 million was processed through the shell companies and dispersed as payroll.”

Detectives seized more than $2.4 million in connection with the investigation, the AG’s Office said.

Investigators determined the scheme was operated out of the MLS Paralegal Services office located in the 2600 block of South Military Trail in West Palm Beach, which acted as a “front” for a paralegal services company owned by Gutierrez, the affidavit said.

Suazo oversaw all operations of three of the 10 companies investigated, while Gutierrez oversaw four others, according to the affidavit. They allegedly prepared fake invoices and payroll envelops from which they took an agreed percentage of money from, ranging between 6 to 8 percent, and collected payroll checks from work site “team leaders.”

The payroll checks would then be deposited into various business bank accounts, and business checks would then be written to the personal name of the various business owners. Leal would then cash the checks, the affidavit said. The process “was done to circumvent check cashing limits for businesses for workers’ compensation policies.”

Several days during any given work week, Leal would deposit as much as $700,000 in cash into a safe hidden inside a closet floor in the MLS Paralegal Services office, the affidavit said.

After surveilling the office address on multiple dates, investigators wrote in the affidavit: “The heavy and high volume of construction workers dropping off payroll checks (Over 50 daily) and collecting salary is obvious.”

Farina, Matute, Martinez and Blandon were also found to be working and operating out of the address under the direction of Gutierrez and Suazo, the affidavit said.

Gutierrez on Monday in Palm Beach County court pleaded not guilty to charges of operating as an unlicensed money service business, organized scheme to defraud and workman’s compensation fraud, court records show.

Last month, Suazo, Matute, Blandon and Farina pleaded not guilty to charges of organized scheme to defraud, operating as an unlicensed money service business and workmans’ compensation fraud, court records show. Leal has not yet entered a plea to charges of money laundering and operating as an unlicensed money service transmitter.

Court records were not available Wednesday in Martinez’s case.

A Manatee County man is accused of fraudulently collecting thousands in disability benefits while working but telling his insurer he was unemployed, according to the sheriff’s office.

Willie Nathan Young Sr., 38, is charged with scheme to defraud involving between $20,000 and $50,000, a second-degree felony. If convicted, Young faces up to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine under Florida law.

An attorney representing Young did not immediately respond to the Bradenton Herald’s request for comment.

According to an arrest report, Young stopped working toward the end of 2019 after reporting a leg injury and began receiving long-term disability benefits. The arrest report alleges Young received roughly $34,000 in disability payments that he was not entitled to after investigators calculated overpayments using payroll records and the policy’s benefit formula.

Investigators allege Young failed to disclose that he was actively running his business, Blessed Movers LLC, while collecting benefits, despite the policy requiring him to report any earnings.

According to the arrest report, Young signed multiple forms stating he was not employed while continuing to receive the insurance payouts. However, while under surveillance, investigators said they witnessed Young moving heavy objects and assisting with other moving activities despite the leg injury.

During an interview with detectives, Young admitted he had not reported income from the moving company to the insurance company despite receiving letters reminding him that he had to report any employment or earnings, according to investigators.

The insurer later determined Young’s earnings exceeded the limits allowed under the policy and that his disability claim should have been closed because he no longer met the policy’s “definition of disability,” investigators wrote.

Deputies arrested Young on a fraud charge before he was later released after posting a $10,000 bond, according to court records. He has since pleaded not guilty.

Young is next scheduled to appear in court for a hearing at the Manatee County Judicial Center on Sept. 3 before Circuit Judge Guy Flowers, court records show.

Daytona Beach police arrested two men last week over what they’re calling a multi-state Tesla theft scheme, and the arrest video is worth watching for one moment alone. An officer stands over a handcuffed 23-year-old named Liwei Sun, listens to him explain how the operation worked, and delivers the verdict: “You’re the world’s worst businessman.” He’s not wrong about the math. He’s missing the part of the story that actually matters.

Sun wasn’t stealing Teslas, at least not directly. By his own account to police, he paid $5,000 a car, shipped the vehicles elsewhere to be sold, and got his $5,000 back once they moved. Somewhere in the middle, someone else on the crew had one very specific job: disable the car’s tracking before it went anywhere.

That detail is the entire story.

This wasn’t really a car theft ring. It was an insurance-fraud scheme running on cars that happen to carry cellular modems, and modems create problems that didn’t exist the last time this particular scam was popular.

According to Daytona Beach police, Sun and 39-year-old Hongyu Kuang were arrested outside a Tesla dealership after investigators connected them to vehicles falsely logged as stolen in multiple states. Body camera footage shows officers pulling Kuang out of a black Tesla they say was taken from Merritt Island, more than 50 miles away. Sun told officers he had identified himself at the dealership under the name William Golden. He now faces charges of organized scheme to defraud over $50,000, unauthorized possession of a driver’s license, and grand theft of a motor vehicle. Kuang’s role, according to investigators, was simpler: drop the car at a hotel parking lot and let it disappear into someone else’s hands. Police believe the operation was already running in other states.

Insurance investigators have a name for the maneuver at the center of this case: an owner give-up. It is not a new scam. It surged during the 2008 financial crisis, when a wave of car owners found themselves owing more on a loan than the vehicle was worth and discovered the fastest way out was to hand the keys to somebody else, report the car stolen, and let the insurance company write the check.

What’s changed isn’t the fraud. It’s the car.

A sedan from the give-up fraud’s heyday was easy to make disappear. A friend drove it off, and the paper trail went cold. A Tesla is a worse getaway car for the same reason it’s a better daily driver: it knows where it is. Sentry Mode logs anyone who touches it, and the companion app can locate, lock, and in many configurations immobilize the vehicle remotely. None of that stops a determined crew. It does turn “make the car disappear” into a two-step job instead of a one-step job.

Twenty years ago, that second step didn’t exist in this business. Now it’s a line item.

The fake name at the dealership matters just as much as the disabled tracking. Sun didn’t need to break a window or hot-wire an ignition, because a Tesla has neither. What he needed was a license good enough to fool a salesperson for a few minutes. The Auto Wire has covered this exact gap before: a California man pleaded guilty this summer to running sixteen fake driver’s licenses through dealership finance offices, and a Tampa dealer separately turned phantom loan paperwork into an attempted Rolls-Royce smuggling case. Dealerships are built to move inventory fast, not to run forensic document review on every walk-in. That gap is exactly where fraud like this lives.

Once a VIN is flagged stolen in the United States, it becomes almost impossible to title, register, or insure here. That’s precisely why the next move, case after case, is export, whether the car was actually stolen off a driveway or handed over willingly as part of a give-up scheme. Customs officers and insurance investigators have spent years pulling stolen vehicles out of shipping containers at ports up and down the East Coast, and The Auto Wire has reported on rings that moved stolen SUVs from New Jersey to West Africa and from rental fleets into the same overseas pipeline. A flagged Tesla is worthless in a parking lot in Florida. Overseas, where American EVs carry a premium and import paperwork gets less scrutiny, it’s still a $40,000 car.

The lock they had to defeat wasn’t on the door. It was on the title.

That’s the detail that should bother you more than the arrest itself. Police allege Kuang was sitting in a car actually stolen out of Merritt Island, while Sun was separately describing an arrangement that sounds like owners reporting their own cars stolen for a payout. Two different crimes, feeding the same pipeline. Once a car enters that system, it stops mattering whether it was taken by force or handed over on purpose. The disposal process is identical: kill the connectivity, move the car fast, get it past a port before the title catches up. Auto theft and auto insurance fraud used to be separate categories with separate investigators. Increasingly, they’re just two entry points into the same business.

Sun’s arithmetic never worked, and the officer was right to mock it. Paying $5,000 to eventually get $5,000 back, with $2,000 floating in between, is not a profitable business by any definition a real businessman would recognize.

But Sun was never running a car business. He was running a title-laundering operation that used a Tesla as raw material, the same way a chop shop uses a sedan for parts. He just needed a fake ID and a working knowledge of which setting turns off the GPS, instead of a torch and a getaway driver. Daytona Beach police say this scheme was already running in other states before anyone made an arrest in Florida. Somewhere right now, somebody else is filling that same job opening: turn off the tracking, don’t ask where the car came from.

Niya Curinton Dix, 50, a local real estate broker, was booked into the Alachua County Jail today and charged with five felonies related to allegedly filing a fraudulent insurance claim.

The sworn complaint from the Florida Department of Financial Services alleges that in September 2024, Dix filed a property loss claim to Florida Farm Bureau for damage to the lights in her pool. As part of the claim, Dix reportedly submitted a quote from a pool company that said several of the lights had been flooded for a long time, so Florida Farm Bureau denied the claim, stating that the damage did not appear to be storm-related.

In December 2025, Dix allegedly filed a second claim for damage to the pool lights; the claim stated that “lightning strikes hit the breaker to the pool lights and the pump [which] fried the computer board.” Dix allegedly submitted an affidavit that used the name Before and After Projects, and she reportedly provided a quote from the same pool company. However, this quote from the pool company did not show any estimated prices; it only had a “completion notes” section and did not have the same letterhead as the previous quote from the same company. The claim also allegedly included an invoice from the pool company from October 2025 with a quote for $13,381 in work to be completed, along with an invoice from Envisio Partners for the same items, with an estimated price of $12,558.

On February 4, 2026, the Department of Financial Services (DFS) received a tip from Dix’s ex-husband that Dix was submitting fraudulent insurance claims after her ex-husband received a letter from Florida Farm Bureau about the December 2025 claim; her ex-husband said he had contacted Florida Farm Bureau and had been told the claim was for lightning damage.

Florida Farm Bureau reportedly told Dix’s ex-husband that payment for the claim had been issued to him, Niya Dix, and the mortgage company; however, when he examined the documents provided by Florida Farm Bureau, he realized that the pool repair estimates were identical to a 2024 quote, and he also knew he had not endorsed any check from Florida Farm Bureau. Dix’s ex-husband also reportedly told DFS that he knew the repairs to the pool had not been completed.

A DFS investigator spoke with the pool company, and a representative said the estimate and invoice that Niya Dix provided with the December 2025 claim had been altered; the representative said the pool company does not do permit and electrical panel replacements, which were both reportedly included in the document provided to Florida Farm Bureau. The representative also said the price of the lights on the claim documents was higher than the actual price and that those lights were known to be damaged since at least August 2024.

The pool company representative reportedly said Niya Dix had requested a quote for a leak detection dye test and hydraulic cement repair, and that quote appeared to have been copied and placed onto the invoice provided to Florida Farm Bureau, with the price changed from $1,225 to $13,381.

The investigator also reportedly examined the documents from the 2024 claim and found discrepancies between the documents provided by the pool company and the documents submitted by Niya Dix to Florida Farm Bureau.

The investigator sent a subpoena to Envisio Partners, which was found to provide strategic planning and performance management services, not pool repairs; the investigator reported that the company did not respond to the subpoena.

The investigator contacted the owner of Before and After Projects and reported that he said the services listed on the document were not performed by his company, the contact number and signature did not belong to anyone at the company, and he considered the affidavit to be fraudulent.

Florida Farm Bureau reportedly said the December 2025 claim was paid electronically into an account that was found to be solely owned by Niya Dix.

Dix has been charged with insurance fraud under $20,000, two counts of forgery, using the identity of another person/company, and unlawful use of a two-way communications device.

Dix is also facing a sworn complaint for allegedly commingling funds belonging to multiple tenants of Gainesville Housing Authority properties, with charges of theft under $50,000 from a person over the age of 65, fraud, and forgery; no warrant has been issued in that case, and she has not been booked on those charges.

Dix has no recent criminal convictions, but according to a court document, adjudication of guilt was withheld in 2000 for petit theft and in 2002 for grand theft; the document also shows 14 worthless check convictions, all more than 20 years old. A sworn complaint was filed in 2023, alleging that she drove a vehicle toward a woman after threatening to hit her with the vehicle, but the charges were eventually dropped.

According to the Department of Business & Professional Regulation’s licensing portal, Dix has an active Real Estate Broker license and an application in progress for a Construction Financial Officer license.

Judge Susanne Wilson Bullard set bail at $25,000 in the warrant, and Dix has been released from the jail.

Six defendants will stand trial on charges alleging the group operated an auto insurance fraud scheme targeting Michigan residents involved in automobile collisions, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Anita Fox, Director of the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services announced last week.

It is alleged that, beginning in 2013, Michael Angelo, of New Jersey, ran a lawyer hotline, 1-800-USLawyer, and funneled auto accident callers into an elaborate insurance fraud scheme, directing the callers to one or several of the many medical enterprises owned or controlled by Angelo.

The referred caller allegedly would be directed through a predetermined protocol of office visits, device and injection treatments, medication prescriptions, and drug screenings, physical therapy sessions and diagnostic imaging all performed within Angelo’s network of enterprises or those operated by coconspirators. It is alleged that each business then billed the no-fault auto insurance carriers (or the Michigan Assigned Claims Plan for the uninsured patients) for the respective treatments.

Angelo, 61, faces one count of conducting a criminal enterprise, a 20-year felony, as well as three counts of insurance fraud.

Mohammed Ali Abraham, 70, of Dearborn Heights; Michael Angelo, 61, of Springfield, N.J.; Hassan Fayad, 37, of Dearborn; Robert Presley, 49, of Ferndale; Thomas Quartz, 36, of Grosse Ile; and Chitra Sinha, 80, of Bloomfield, also face counts of conducting a criminal enterprise and insurance fraud.

“After a lengthy, comprehensive investigation, we are pleased this case is moving forward in court. We appreciate our partnership with the Attorney General to investigate insurance fraud and hold those responsible accountable for their actions,” said DIFS Director Anita Fox.

On Monday, Kouri Richins was hit with two counts of mortgage fraud, two counts of insurance fraud, and three counts of forgery. The new charges were listed in documents obtained by Court TV.

Last year, she was charged with aggravated murder and other offenses in connection with the death of her husband, Eric Richins.

In the new charges, prosecutors allege that Richins applied for a mortgage in 2021, in which she claimed a balance of $210,898 in her credit union account. According to court documents, there was actually $15,609. The document further states when asked by a mortgage loan officer about her credit history in July 2021, Richins replied,

“I recently learned about all of this as well LOL and then my husband tried to explain
to me this was his doing a while ago.. (sic) We are in the process of separation for one of many
reasons but this is one of them to keep it short and sweet LOL… It’s been crazy to say the least!”

Under the second mortgage fraud charge, prosecutors allege another mortgage application for Richins claimed an account balance of $702,831.

She’s also accused of fraudulently applying for life insurance for her husband and forging his signature just over a month before he died, then fraudulently claiming the life insurance benefits.

Authorities say Richins murdered her husband by by putting five times the lethal dosage of illicit Fentanyl in his cocktail. After his death, she wrote and self-published a children’s book about grief for the three sons she shared with her late husband.

A surveillance video helped police officers uncover a fraud scheme that involved at least four people in Miami-Dade County, according to police.

Police officers arrested Lyre Cruz, Frank Marques, and Roman Alvarez on Tuesday morning and detectives reported they were working to identify and arrest their accomplices.

Police officers reported the surveillance video evidence showed a trio lying through their teeth after a two-vehicle crash on Monday in the University Park area.

A 2019 Chevy Tahoe owned by Marques and a 2022 GMC Sierra Denali owned by Cruz crashed shortly before 10:15 p.m., Monday, at Southwest 108 Avenue and 38 Street.

According to police, the video shows it was a setup: Marques, 33, and Alvarez, 60, both passengers of the Tahoe, got out, and Cruz, 40, parked the Sierra Denali at the intersection and got out.

The action-movie-like theatrics followed when the unidentified driver of the Tahoe plowed into the unoccupied Sierra — flipping it on its side, according to the police report.

While Marques called 911 to say he was driving eastbound on 38 Street when he ran a stop sign and crashed, Cruz reported that he was in the Sierra Denali traveling southbound on 108 Avenue when the Tahoe came out of nowhere and hit him, according to police.

Alvarez said he was a passenger in the Sierra Denali, and corroborated the reports by Cruz and Marques, according to police. Confronted with the evidence, police officers reported Marques confessed.

A detective wrote the fraudsters’ goal was to “create documentation of a motor vehicle crash that was preplanned for the purpose of making a motor vehicle tort claim … to be used for personal injury protection benefits through their motor vehicle insurance.”

Marques, Cruz, and Alvarez were facing charges of staged accident insurance fraud, a second-degree felony; and false report of crime to law enforcement authority, a first-degree misdemeanor.

Detectives asked anyone with information about this or other cases to call Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.

An insurance fraudster who exaggerated injuries from a car accident was caught after being seen running on a TV show.

Patricia Rogers, 25, from Barnsley, claimed damages worth £492,141 from her insurer after the crash in 2014.

She claimed she could not walk unaided, but was seen running across the stage on the Jeremy Kyle show in 2017.

After she admitted fraud, Rogers was given a 12-month jail term, suspended for 18 months, at Sheffield Crown Court on Tuesday.

She was also ordered to pay £500 in compensation.

At the same court, she had earlier admitted fraud by false representation after the case was referred to City of London Police’s insurance fraud enforcement department.

Police said Rogers’ insurer, NFU Mutual, had gathered surveillance which showed she was able to walk unaided for an extensive period of time.

The company recorded the footage on 26 April 2021, after it found inconsistencies in the medical reports that Rogers had submitted to support her claim.

In one report, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon wrote that he was unable to explain Rogers’ condition and concluded it was either grossly exaggerated or due to an underlying psychological condition.

The surveillance footage, which showed Rogers on the way to a medical appointment, revealed she had travelled there in a taxi, going to the car with a walking stick hanging from her arm, but she walked into the medical centre leaning heavily on the stick.

During the appointment, she alleged that her back pain stopped her from standing up for more than 10 minutes at a time and that she could only walk with a stick or crutches.

However, City of London Police said that footage from earlier that day showed Rogers walking her two dogs for about 40 minutes with no obvious discomfort, and she was also walking while holding the stick without using it for support.

She told officers from the force’s insurance fraud enforcement department that she could not hold the dogs’ leads as well as a walking stick.

When police showed Rogers footage of her walking, standing and running unaided on the Jeremy Kyle show, she said she had been able to walk around the set because she was feeling angry and was distracted from the pain.

Before being axed by ITV in 2019, the programme often featured disputes between partners and family members which Mr Kyle attempted to resolve on stage – regularly using lie detectors.

Det Con Carley Parodi, from City of London Police, said: “Rogers took advantage of a genuine car accident and, for almost a decade, kept up the pretence it had a substantial effect on her life.

“There was a huge difference between Rogers’ ability to carry out her day-to-day activities in the surveillance footage and the serious impact of the accident as she described during her medical appointments.”

Det Con Parodi added that it was “astounding” Rogers had told medical professionals she could not walk unaided, but then appeared on national television “doing just that”.

“Rogers thought she could convince medical professionals and the insurer using methods such as going to her medical appointments with a walking stick.”

The sentence given to Rogers “should serve as a reminder that, however clever you think you are being, committing insurance fraud will have repercussions”, Det Con Parodi said.

Richard Turnell, claims specialist at NFU Mutual, said: “Fraud of this kind is a crime which can and does have a real impact on innocent people and ultimately impacts premiums.

“We are determined to continue to protect our members from third party insurance fraud and we will continue to work with [police] to hold criminals to account for their actions.”

A Boynton Beach man is facing multiple felony charges after investigators say he kept cashing his dead mother’s insurance benefits by forging her signature for more than a year. Joseph Anthony Gallo, 63, was arrested following an investigation by the Florida Department of Financial Services, which accused him of insurance fraud, uttering a forged document, criminal use of the personal identification of a deceased person, and running an organized scheme to defraud.

According to investigators in a report reviewed by BocaNewsNow.com, Gallo’s mother, Lucy Capezza, died at Bethesda Hospital West on July 18, 2023. The two had shared a home together in Wellington. Despite her death, investigators say Gallo signed his mother’s name on paperwork submitted to the New York State Insurance Fund in November 2023, and again in May 2024, allowing him to keep collecting roughly $600 a month in benefits that stopped being valid the moment she died.

Investigators say the scheme wasn’t discovered until September 2024, when the insurance company realized Capezza had been dead for more than a year. By then, about $18,000 had been deposited into a joint bank account Gallo shared with his mother. The fund managed to claw back $3,000, but investigators say the rest, roughly $15,000, was gone. Detectives say repeated attempts to reach Gallo about the discrepancy went nowhere.

Gallo was booked on the felony charges stemming from the Department of Financial Services’ Bureau of Insurance Fraud investigation. He was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail on Friday and released early Saturday morning on $30,000 bond.

Bench warrant issued for former lawyer accused of stealing client’s insurance settlement