Hall of Shame’s No-Class of 2011 Dishonored
Quick... Lock your front door and hide. The newest cellar dwellers of the Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame have been dishonored.
The No-Class of 2011 features some of America’s most brazen, cunning or plain dumb insurance criminals. They’re now enshrined on the crime-space continuum. All meaculprits were convicted or had other legal closure in 2010.
Dishonoring masters of mayhem actually serves a serious purpose. The Hall of Shame puts a human face on insurance fraud and its huge costs to Americans like you.
Experience the greed...money-madness...brazenness...and sometimes laughable klutziness. This is the seedy world of insurance fraud. And we all pay.
Hoax Hassids stage daffy diamond heist
Two anxiety-ridden diamond merchants needed money to prop up their struggling business finances.
Their loopy plan: Hire two thugs disguised as Hassidic Jews with toy guns. The hoax Hassids would fake a robbery of their New York diamond-district store. Theyd pretend to steal the bling, but the merchants would hide the diamonds themselves and make a false $9-million insurance claim.
But Atul Shah and Haveer Kankariya needed a remedial course in thievery. Their own security cameras recorded the disheveled insurance scheme as they lurched from one bungle to the next.
Two Hassids in beards and wide-brimmed black hats entered their store, forced Shah to the floor at gunpoint and then stole the rocks from boxes in a safe, the penurious pair told their insurer after the purported snatch. Police found empty jewelry boxes scattered on the floor. Shah pretended to be hysterical, and Kankariya said he was at home when the robbery went down. Read full story
Home insurance arsonist shoots witnesses, kids
Dogged by debt, William Craig Miller torched his fancy home for an illicit insurance bailout. But growing desperate as his fraud trial neared, the Scottsdale, Ariz. man coldly executed five people to prevent witnesses from testifying. It was one of the deadliest insurance crimes in U.S. history.
Miller seemed a successful community man and entrepreneur, living in an affluent neighborhood. But he was financially crumbling behind the high-flying veneer, So he hoped a $440,000 insurance payday for incinerating his house would help ease his money woes.
But investigators found gas cans inside the charred ruins. Gasoline pour patterns also were scattered throughout the house, except in his sons bedroom. Miller was arrested.
The noose tightened as his trial drew nigh. Miller had hired an employee named Steven Duffy to help burn down the place. But Duffy turned remorseful soon afterward. He and his live-in girlfriend Tammy Lovell agreed to testify against Miller.
Their testimony could send him up the river. They had to go. Read full story
Roof caves in on DJs stormy insurance con
Radio DJ Tanya Cruise sailed rough waters. She had two crooked politicians and a shady adjuster create storm damage to her home in a hapless insurance scheme that was discovered when one of her corrupt politicos was wiretapped for yet other corruption crimes.
Lori Sergiacomi was known as smooth-talking Tanya Cruise, the popular midday DJ for Lite Rock 105 in the Providence, R.I. area.
Groundwater flooded her basement after a big summer storm, but she didnt have federal flood insurance.
Sergiacomi also wanted to make expensive improvements to her roof and pool, and figured the storm provided the perfect cover for an insurance scam to pay for her uninsured home improvements.
She was buddies with two shady local politicos who were glad to help out. John Zambarano, then a North Providence councilman, banged a big hole into her roof with a branch. He also messed up her home interior and pool to mimic insurable storm damage. Former town council president and home contractor Robert Ricci helped with the damage. Read full story
Crooked cop shoots self in foot with shot to chest
The distress call came in — a cop was down.
A passer-by found Los Angeles School District police officer Jeff Stenroos lying on the ground near his open car door.
A car-burglary suspect with a pony tail and black leather jacket pumped a bullet into Stenroos while he patrolled the perimeter of El Camino High, the seemingly stricken officer said.
But the attack on an officer was a hoax. Stenroos shot himself in his bullet-proof vest and then took paid time off of work courtesy of a fraudulent workers compensation injury claim.
His scheme created chaos throughout San Fernando Valley right after the shooting. Read full story
Playing with fire burns homeowners and hired torch
Victor and Olga Barriere wanted to burn down their rickety home for insurance money. They got their wish, but paid a higher price than any insurance money they could steal.
Their hired henchman was a rank amateur at home arsons. He blew up the house in a searing fireball, fatally engulfing himself in flames and endangering homes throughout the neighborhood.
The rundown, 600-square-foot structure in Long Beach, Calif. had numerous code violations that would require expensive repairs.
The Barrieres also were stuck with a $315,000 mortgage and a decaying home nobody wanted to buy. Theyd tried to sell the house several times, but no buyers. Fed up, they hired their handyman Thomas Trucios to barbecue the place for an insurance payday. Read full story
Cow parts and mannequin hide dopey death
Jim Davis died suddenly in his home, felled by a tragic heart attack.
Mourners stood by as his coffin was lowed into the ground during a touching graveside funeral at a Los Angeles cemetery. Peace eternal, Jim, peace eternal.
But Jim Davis never existed. He was pure vapor, and the coffin was empty. A mortuary worker and phlebotomist faked his death in a screwball scheme to steal nearly $1 million in life insurance.
And get this the dizzy duo covered up their con with a mannequin and cow parts. Huh? Read on. Using forged documents, Jean Crump, Faye Shilling and several other cronies convinced life insurers to issue $950,000 in coverage on so-called Davis. They bought the burial plot, staged his funeral, buried his casket and even hired mourners to enhance the surrealism. Read full story
Daughter, hubby get dishonest demises
Pitiable family calamities dogged Bridget Buckner. The Chicago-area womans husband and little daughter had died suddenly, just months apart.
How sad.
Buckner produced death certificates and enough vivid detail to convince her employers life insurer to hand over $25,000 in life-insurance money. But neither family member actually died. She offed them on paper to heist the insurance loot.
Buckners preschool child Briajay died of an illness in 2008, she told the life insurer with whom she had coverage through her employer, Hallmark Services. She made the claim barely a month after starting with the company. Buckner forked over a bogus Cook County death certificate and collected $10,000 in life-insurance money. Read full story
Pastor cares enough to kill disabled friend
Legally blind and mentally disabled, Lemuel Wallace thought he had a caring friend in Kevin Pushia.
After all, Pushia was a pastor, a supposed man of peace. He also was known for his work with Baltimores developmentally disabled.
And yes, Pushia really did care: About getting rich, and Wallace was his meal ticket. Pushia had him executed to score a $1.4-million life-insurance payout.
Pushia cared so much that he even stole $50,000 from his own church to pay the hitmen. He was thousands of dollars in debt and faced foreclosure on several properties. Read full story
Armenian mob boss milks Medicare for $160 million
Vor. Its an obscure word, good for scoring points in Scrabble. But in the world of Armenian mobsters, a Vor is the godfather, the don the gangs overlord.
Armen Karazianis was a Vor who ran a vast Armenian criminal gang in the U.S. The far-reaching kleptocracy brazenly looted American taxpayers with $160 million in bogus treatment claims against Medicare.
It was alpha thievery to the max, one of the biggest Medicare heists ever committed by a single criminal enterprise.
His gang was a veritable fraud franchise that puts the traditional Mafia to shame, said a federal prosecutor at his trial. Karazianis Medicare thievery was diabolical, the head of the FBIs New York operation added. Read full story
Read about previous years inductees to the Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame:
