Six Charged in $1.7M Damage Claims Scheme With Florida Government

Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, who quickly showed his cards on wasteful and fraudulent spending at the local level, has now announced a crackdown inside his own and other state government departments, related to fraudulent insurance claims.

CFO Blaise Ingoglia said Monday that six people, three of them recent state agency workers, were arrested in connection with a scheme that involved $1.7 million in fraudulent damage claims paid by the state Division of Risk Management.

Details were few, and arrest records were not immediately available. Ingoglia said in a bulletin that one woman who worked at the Department of Financial Services led the operation and processed more than 220 suspicious property damage claims.The woman, who was a risk management specialist at DFS, recruited people she knew and filed false vehicle damage claims for them from 2021 to 2024, according to local news reports.

Investigators found that many of the claimants did not own a registered vehicle and others did not have drivers’ licenses, WCTV reported. In two dozen instances, registration information had been altered. Some of the falsified paperwork was found in the woman’s desk, the news site reported.

The alleged ringleader was charged with grand theft, money laundering, fraud, criminal use of personal identification, and more.

Two others were employees at the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, which licenses businesses in the state.

More arrests are expected in coming weeks, the CFO’s office said in a statement. The DFS Criminal Investigations Division led the probe into the alleged fraud.

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