In Florida, three defendants were indicted for various involvement in wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The fraud scheme began in September 2015 when one of the defendants registered a corporation called JM Construction Services, Inc. with the State of Florida and then applied for a workers compensation insurance policy to cover six employees for one year on an estimated annual payroll of $140,000. The insurance company issued an annual premium based on the payroll information provided in the application at $17,000. Amendments to the policy later resulted in the premium being raised to $38,000 to cover nineteen employees and a higher annual payroll of $410,000. Florida law requires that any business engaging in construction work must have workers compensation insurance, and failure to do so is a felony. If a contractor is employing subcontractors they must provide proof that they have workers compensation for their employees.

Two of the defendants decided to “rent” the JM Construction workers compensation insurance policy to many contractors and subcontractors who employed hundreds of employees, some of which were likely undocumented aliens. In order to perpetuate this scheme the insurance agent was instructed to send certificates of insurance to the contractors and subcontractors as proof of insurance, then the subcontractors and contractors would write payroll checks to JM Construction for work performed, who would return the money to be passed out as payroll (minus their 4 percent fee). The first year netted the defendants over $375,000, and no state or federal payroll taxes were deducted from the workers' pay. Soon the operation was busted by the State of Florida Department of Financial Services, Division of Workers' Compensation who served a Stop-Work order on JM Construction for material understatement or concealment of payroll. The defendant-owner of JM Construction fled the country.

In order to continue a fruitful scheme, the other two defendants registered another company for a similar scheme, securing workers compensation insurance for six employees at a $100,000 annual payroll and an annual premium of $20,000. This insurance was rented out in the same way as the insurance in their previous scheme. The other two defendants made $435,351 on their collection of 4 percent of each payroll, and again no state or federal taxes were paid out of the payroll.

The defendants were charged with a total of sixty-three counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, each count carrying a maximum penalty of twenty years in prison, and the United States intends to seek the forfeiture of $812,000, the amount of proceeds obtained as a result of this large fraud scheme.