Amazing Disgrace: 2009 Hall of Shame
America’s most brazen, vicious or plain klutzy insurance crooks dishonored America’s newest pharaohs of fraud have been dishonored with election to the Coalition’s Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame. The No-Class of 2009 represents some of our most memorable masters of mayhem. All were convicted or had other legal closure during the past year. These mea-culprits help put a human face on insurance fraud. They remind us that fraud is far more than a victimless prank. People suffer, and sometimes die. Families are broken. Children feel pain and cry. Trusting seniors lose their life savings. Everyone’s insurance premiums rise. Welcome to the online cellblock, home of our latest Barons of Bleak. Read their stories. They’re stealing from all of us. Get mad. Feel outrage. Even laugh—a little—at the klutziest cons. They remind us the gene pool doesn’t have a lifeguard. But always, fight back. With concerned citizen involvement, we’ll never become One Nation, Under Fraud.  William Cunningham. Innocent children often are used as props for insurance cons, and William Cunningham is living proof. The Georgia truck driver poisoned his kids with lighter fluid, anti-depressants and other harmful substances in a bid to extort an insurance payout from the Campbell Soup Company. His children were virtually helpless, just 18 months and three years old at the time. Cunningham poisoned their soup several times, increasing their pain with each go-around to set the stage for his shakedown. First he laced young Billy’s soup with hot peppers. The tot’s face and mouth burned and swelled up so badly that he was taken to the hospital. The fraud setup was taking shape. About two weeks later, Cunningham slipped lighter fluid and anti-depressants into Billy’s and Miranda’s soup. He then forced more poisoned soup down their throats to make sure the meal made them sick enough. Another hospital trip followed. Cunningham then threatened Campbell with a lawsuit, lying that the company had sold tainted soup. But Campbell wouldn’t cave in. The company investigated, determining it couldn’t have ladled up poisoned soup. Cunningham received 100 years in jail. But that’s small consolation to the kids. The lighter fluid may have permanently damaged their lungs, relatives say. And the kids must live with a broken family, knowing their father betrayed them for the smell of money. View full story >  Michael Taris. The Levittown, Pa. man tossed large, beefy guys around the ring as a pro wrestler for the National Wrestling Superstars. But he didn’t expect to be hammerlocked by investigators for faking an injury to extort a payout from 7-Eleven convenience store. Taris lied that a little puddle of coffee on the floor had body-slammed him to the floor, seriously injuring his back, neck and legs. He said he couldn’t work, roughhouse with his son, stand for long periods of time or even mow the lawn. But all the while, Taris was banging around the ring, and even working as a male escort and massage therapist. Surveillance video finally tripped him up better than any 280-pound opponent. He was caught in the ring—being thrown against ropes, tossed from the ring, and leaping off ropes and slamming on of top opponents. The Pennsylvania AG landed the conviction, and Taris received three years of probation plus a fine.  Michael Howell. The Charlotte, N.C. insurance agent was stealing premiums from clients and not buying them the promised coverage. Concerned by mounting complaints, the state insurance department sent auditor Sallie Rohrbach to investigate Howell’s books.She never returned home. Howell murdered her when she got too close to the truth. Howell had heisted more than $150,000 in premiums from hundreds of clients, leaving them dangerously uncovered. Rohrbach arrived at the Dilworth Agency for what seemed like a routine assignment. But colleagues grew concerned when she didn’t return as scheduled.  Investigators found her state-owned car in a parking lot near the agency. Her possessions were found in her hotel room. Blood was discovered on the carpet and on a computer cord in Howell’s office. Howell never confessed to killing Rohrbach. But his wife admitted he’d privately told her he’d snapped and hit Rohrbach with a computer table. Howell finally led investigators to her decomposed body hidden in the woods. He’ll serve up to 35 years. Agent scams of clients are a large problem around the U.S. And as Sallie Rohrbach discovered, sometimes those scams can turn from theft into murder. View full story > Juan Jose Luna. Trying to torch his home for insurance money, the Live Oak, Calif. man launched a klutzy arson plot that looked more like a drone missile attack gone wrong. It’s unclear if Luna actually had a plan. He simply sloshed gasoline around his home and then blithely lit the volatile mixture. Instead of a carefully managed house fire, Luna ignited a loud explosion. The walls buckled outward, and only earthquake strapping kept the house from almost immediate collapse into a fiery heap. Glass shards and other debris flew throughout the neighborhood, endangering anyone who happened to be nearby. Fire fighters arrived at what amounted to a small-scale war zone. They wouldn’t come near the place for hours until the explosive blaze quieted down. The hapless Luna was found wandering in a daze around the neighborhood. Two fingers dangled by strips of flesh, other fingers were badly broken and his clothes smelled of gasoline. Luna had a hard time explaining his condition just blocks away from his burning house, and received nine months in jail. View full story > Lewis Drayton. In a misplaced show of family togetherness, the Miami man burned his grandmother alive by torching his family’s home for an insurance payout. Virginia Howard was a devout woman and family matriarch who played piano for her church. The family home mysteriously went down in flames, killing Howard with burns over 70 percent of her body. Investigators quickly suspected Drayton, largely because his excuses and alibis seemed hopelessly muddled. First he blamed his uncle for setting the fire. Except that his uncle was in prison at the time. Drayton finally confessed when investigators found his gas-soaked clothing. His remarkable explanation: His family members who owned the house were having financial problems. If he burned down their house, the money from their homeowner policy would help ease their problems. Drayton also claimed he didn’t realize Virginia was inside the home when he lit the fire. That didn’t wash with investigators. Drayton had just visited Virginia and her car was parked out front. Another motive: she’d died for a whopping $8,000 in life insurance money he stood to collect, prosecutors contended. His family members weren’t charged, but Drayton was slapped with life in prison. Marvin Johnson. After dissecting alibis of thieves as an officer for the Rosedale, Miss. police department, Johnson should’ve learned something about skillfully covering up crimes. Like his own. Johnson faked the theft of a Toyota Avalon for an insurance payout, but offered a clueless series of explanations, each more muddled than the next. His stories become so tangled that he had no chance of escape from the jail cells to which he’d sent street crooks. Like, ultimately, himself. Johnson first lied that someone stole his Avalon from in front of his home. But his claim with Progressive Insurance quickly dissolved. First, Johnson didn’t even try to find the car. That seemed odd for a cop. Then when asked to described the car, Johnson incredibly said it had both a manual and automatic transmission. The Avalon also had a keypad on the door for secure entry, he said. Except for two problems: Toyota doesn’t make cars with external keypads, and Johnson couldn’t remember the entry code for what supposedly was his own car. Investigators for Mississippi’s fraud bureau relentlessly closed in. Where did he buy the car? He claimed he bought it from a Cadillac dealer. But then he switched gears and said some “dude” under a tree by the roadside sold it to him. In fact, Johnson never even owned the car. It was traced to someone else in another state. But in his own befuddled way, Johnson still tried to make a fake theft claim for insurance payola. The Mississippi AG’s office relentlessly pursued Johnson in court, nailing him with at least a year in jail. View full story >  Alan Michael Rubenstein. The smell of a blood money impelled the New Orleans man to massacre his stepson, his stepson’s wife and their four-year-old daughter for $250,000 in life insurance.Rubenstein bought the policy for four-year-old Krystal and listed his wife Doris as the beneficiary. He took the doomed family to his vacation cabin in rural Mississippi under the pretext of helping the Krystal’s parents iron out some marital problems. Once they arrived, Rubenstein killed them in an orgy of violence. Several weeks afterward, police found the badly decomposed bodies of Rubenstein’s stepson, Darrell Perry and wife Annie, on the living room floor next a still-running TV. They’d been repeatedly stabbed. Little Krystal was strangled, and was found on a bed. Meanwhile, Rubenstein collected his insurance money. Then, as he described it, he immediately “blew” the windfall on personal fun. The Mississippi Supreme Court re-sentenced Rubenstein to life in prison. |
Hall of Shame Archives:
|
