This story is reprinted with permission from FC&&S Legal, the industry's only comprehensive digital resource designed for insurance coverage law professionals. Visit the website to subscribe.
|Complex scam
Jose Manuel Caballero-Morlesin, an insurance agent and owner of Axis Underwriters, Inc., a Miami-based insurance agency, has been arrested after an investigation led by the Bureau of Insurance Fraud of the Florida Department of Financial Services unraveled what it asserted was a complex scam in which he enlisted a finance company to pay annual premiums tied to fake insurance applications.
In total, according to the government, Caballero-Morlesin submitted 38 fake applications and stole $276,000 in premium payments.
|Up to 157 years in prison
The government said that Caballero-Morlesin confessed to investigators and now faces up to 157 years in prison, if convicted.
According to prosecutors, during six months in mid-2016, Caballero-Morlesin submitted 38 applications for financing using made up consumer information. As alleged, the finance company approved the applications and issued annual premium payments to Caballero-Morlesin's insurance agency. In time, the finance company grew suspicious when no policyholders came forward to pay their monthly installments.
The finance company reported its suspicions to the department's Division of Insurance Agent and Agency Services, which referred the case to fraud investigators as a suspected scam.
|Forgery, theft, misappropriation of insurance funds
Caballero-Morlesin was charged with one count of organized scheme to defraud and 38 counts of forgery, uttering forged instruments, grand theft, and the misappropriation of insurance funds.
Steven A. Meyerowitz, Esq., ([email protected]) is the director of FC&S Legal, the editor-in-chief of the Insurance Coverage Law Report, and the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc. This story is reprinted with permission from FC&S Legal, the industry's only comprehensive digital resource designed for insurance coverage law.
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