Ex-Police Officers Plead Guilty to Conspiring in Auto Insurance Fraud Scheme

Two former police officers have pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection with an auto-insurance fraud scheme, according to U.S. Attorney for Maryland Kelly O. Hayes.

Michael Anthony Owen, Jr., a former Prince Georges County officer, pled guilty to falsification of records, and Jaron Earl Taylor, a former Anne Arundel county officer, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

According to the guilty pleas, between August 2018 and February 2020, Owen and Taylor conspired with fellow police officers Candace Tyler, Conrad D’Haiti, and Davion Percy, and others, in a scheme for insurance companies to pay out the remaining financing costs of unwanted vehicles.

Officials said the members of the conspiracy reported fictitious losses to insurers to obtain money or avoid paying off vehicles that were now worth less than the amount owed on them. They used their statuses as police officers to assist each other’s claims by writing false police reports. Then the co-conspirators submitted fictitious police reports to insurers to validate the claim. The false police reports were intended to impede, obstruct, or influence subsequent investigations of the false insurance claims, according to court documents.

In August 2018, Owen and Taylor staged the theft of Taylor’s Chevrolet Tahoe. After Taylor filed a fraudulent police report, Owen and Taylor stripped the vehicle and drove it deep into the woods of a Maryland state highway property near Largo. Taylor then made a false claim to the United Services Automobile Association (USAA) for the loss, for which USAA paid out a total of $38,670.

Then in January 2020, Owen assisted D’Haiti in avoiding payment on the loan balance of a Jaguar XKR. In cooperation with D’Haiti and Percy, Owen devised a scheme to fake the vehicle’s theft. On January 4, D’Haiti parked his Jaguar behind Marlow Heights Shopping Center where Percy worked as police chief.

D’Haiti then paid Percy $350 to arrange for another co-conspirator to tow the vehicle and extensively vandalize it for the purpose of creating a total insurance loss. Tyler subsequently filed the fictitious police report which D’Haiti used to substantiate his claim against Liberty Mutual Insurance. In February 2020, Liberty Mutual paid the Jaguar’s lienholder, Navy Federal Credit Union, $17,585, on the false claim.

Additionally, in January 2020, Owen and Taylor assisted with disposing of an Infiniti sedan to help a co-conspirator avoid making further payments on the vehicle while on extended overseas duty. The co-conspirator gave Taylor $1,000 via CashApp to stage the theft. Taylor then forwarded the money to Owen who filed a false police report with PGPD, stating the vehicle was stolen.

In reality, Owen, Taylor, and others moved the car to the top floor of a Camp Springs, Maryland apartment-complex parking garage. The co-conspirators attempted to conceal the car’s identity by removing the vehicle’s license plates and replacing them with different ones registered to another vehicle. Then the owner and co-conspirator filed a claim with GEICO that was eventually denied on grounds of fraud.

U.S. Attorney Hayes announced the guilty pleas with Amanda M. Koldjeski, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Malik Aziz, Prince George’s County Police Chief.

Owen faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. Taylor faces a maximum sentence of three years in federal prison if the court fully accepts the plea deal.

Topics
Auto
Fraud
Law Enforcement