"There's no blood, there's no weapons, no gun shot, no body, but this is nonetheless a very serious crime that affects every single one of us," Fernandez Rundle said in an April press conference announcing charges against nine Floridians for allegedly running a countywide $600,000 insurance scam.

Insurers, homeowners, contractors and prosecutors disagree on who's to blame. But all sides have the same question: Is there an answer?

'I got shut down'

For a month after Superstorm Sandy, Quinn and his daughter lived out of their car. Their home had to be demolished, leaving important paperwork, keepsakes and their confidence in tatters.

Quinn filed a claim under his flood insurance policy with Selective Insurance, which was initially denied when his insurer hired an engineer who said the huge cracks in Quinn's foundation and the giant hole underneath it were caused by earth movement, which was not covered by his policy.

Quinn was offered 37 cents on the dollar, prompting a failed appeal. He then hired a public adjuster and appealed to the mitigation department of Florida's Federal Emergency Management Agency, which also was a dead end.

What he didn't know what that his case would be one of thousands to catch the attention of the federal government.

Hundreds of miles away, the Eastern District of New York appointed Louisiana attorney John W. Houghtaling as plaintiffs' liaison counsel to investigate alleged fraud within the FEMA flood insurance program. The effort led to the conviction of Matthew Pappalardo and his New York engineering firm Hi Rise Engineering P.C. for falsifying reports, often using the same earth movement reasoning used to deny Quinn's claim.

Though no fraud was proven in Quinn's engineering report, it emerged that thousands of others had been changed from "Yes, This house has been damaged by the storm" to "No, it has not." That discovery led to reopening 144,000 claims, spawning legal victories and an extra $100 million for storm victims.

Quinn said that after a year of agonizing over what to do, he turned to the courts.

"I'd never sued anybody in my life," said Quinn, who added he was even a little ashamed to be filing a lawsuit at 50 years old.

A structural engineer later inspected Quinn's house, finding proof that foundational damage was caused by flood water. The case settled, but the litigation cost Quinn $43,000, money that won't go into rebuilding his house, which still isn't finished after seven years. His opponent, however, had its legal fees paid by the National Flood Insurance Program, propped up by taxpayer money.

"It was insulting," Quinn said.

Quinn said he was most alarmed that, even with a "very pro-insurance" attitude, after 27 years providing financial advice to one of the country's biggest insurance companies, he felt powerless.

"I'm better suited to have this fight than the average person, and I got shut down," Quinn said.

Fake flood damage?

On the other side of the coin, prosecutors say Florida homeowners are absorbing costs of up to $700 each year for premiums, thanks to scams such as the one allegedly run by two public adjusters, Barbara Maria Diaz de Villegas and her father Jose Gonzalez, arrested in May. Prosecutors say that as homeowner advocates, the pair would appraise and negotiate inflated claims for a share of the insurance payout.

Fernandez Rundle's office claims the father-daughter pair generated more than $2.5 million by recruiting homeowners through friends and referrals. It claims they had a plumber damage properties, then asked complicit adjusters and insurance agents to increase coverage on these homeowners' insurance policy, or create policies if the homeowners were uninsured.

"He'd take a hammer, he'd break some tile, so that the coverage would be for the whole flooring, let's say, in the house," Fernandez Rundle said. "He would break water pipes to make it look like there was a flood, and he actually put the water there as well, to make it appear as if the broken pipe created the flood in the house."

Meanwhile, homeowners with legitimate claims were struggling to keep their homes.

After Hurricane Sandy, for instance, more than 50 of Houghtaling's clients couldn't fix their houses and gave them back to the banks, destroying their credit and going bankrupt.

"I had one [client] that committed suicide because she couldn't handle the fact that she had paid for her insurance and she was losing her family home," Houghtaling said.

In Florida, Quinn fought to avoid that fate, as international studies on displacement after flooding showed natural disasters wreaking havoc on communities, contributing to higher debt, divorce and substance abuse rates, along with health issues and child behavioral problems. 

Quinn teamed with other hurricane victims, consumer advocates, public adjusters and attorneys such as Houghtaling to create the American Policyholder Association, a nonprofit organization aimed at promoting best practices in the insurance industry's property loss adjustment sector.

"The average person on their best day is in no position to stand up to a billion-dollar insurance company," Quinn said. "Now take them after they have just lost everything in a storm and they're wondering about where their kids are going to be sleeping tonight."

What's the fix?

Now, a new development might have raised the stakes. On May 23, a law was passed in Florida aimed at curbing insurance fraud. And although Quinn's group neither supported nor fought the legislation, he said he's worried about how it could affect homeowners, considering the main proponents were pro-insurance lobbyists.

"If I'm a consumer in Florida, you're going to have a tough time convincing me that the fox is guarding my hen house because he wants the hens to be safe," Quinn said. "Was there AOB [assignment of benefits] abuse? I'm sure there was. But maybe throwing the baby out with the bathwater wasn't the smartest choice."

It's not easy to square how insurance companies could be on the same side as policyholders, the way Houghtaling sees it, because their financial interests are polar opposite: Homeowners want as much as possible for their claims, but insurers want to pay less.

"The insurance company says, 'We think we can fix your house for 30 cents on the dollar and the contractor is charging you too much.' That's fine if it's true, but if the person that's saying that is the person that actually has the liability to pay, then you need to be suspicious of that. Because it's a function of the fact that they have a conflict of interest," Houghtaling said.

Tallahassee lawyer and president and CEO of the Personal Insurance Federation of Florida Michael Carlson disagrees that the two groups have divergent interests.

"If we don't serve our customers well, we don't exist anymore," Carlson said. "It's of great concern to our members."

In any event, like Fernandez Rundle's office, homeowner Quinn thinks the answer lies in criminal prosecution.

Quinn met with at least 16 attorneys general in the past eight months to discuss insurance fraud, and his organization offers rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of engineers who defraud policyholders.

Houghtaling seems to agree, saying civil lawsuits aren't the answer because many homeowners find it burdensome to litigate and then surrender a large portion of their claim to hire people like him.

"Why does somebody say to themselves, 'I'm going to take 40% or 30% of what I need to fix my house and hire a lawyer'? What kind of desperation do you need to get into to be in that situation?" he asked. "Could it be that [the insurance company] didn't pay them what they were supposed to pay them?"

Related story:

Florida's new AOB insurance law is conjuring a storm

Claims from 2004 Hurricane Frances still being litigated

Believe it or not: 10 of the craziest claims of 2018