Dozens Arrested In Car Insurance Scam

By Herbert Lowe
Staff Writer

March 12, 2002

Forty-five people have been charged in a $1.6 million insurance fraud case in which vehicles falsely reported as stolen were sold to detectives posing as junkyard dealers in Queens, authorities said Tuesday.

Thirty-seven car owners and eight alleged middlemen were arrested and charged in the undercover police operation, which began in December 1999 and netted 68 vehicles that had been reported stolen, authorities said.

Thirteen car owners and two alleged middlemen were still being sought, officials said.

The owners allegedly turned over their vehicles to middlemen to get rid of them, filed insurance claims that falsely reporting them as stolen and received settlements of up to $32,000, prosecutors said.

The middlemen allegedly sold the vehicles for up to $1,500 to the detectives at an undercover automobile buy-back operation on a street corner in Queens Village, prosecutors said.

The defendants believed that they could beat the system, but they could not have been more mistaken, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said in a statement. Instead of pocketing easy money, they now face serious felony charges and prison sentences.

The charges include grand larceny, insurance fraud, criminal possession of stolen property, unauthorized use of a vehicle, falsely reporting an incident and conspiracy.

If convicted, most of the defendants, who were being held in custody pending arraignment Tuesday, face up to 7 years in prison.

Operation Street Sweep recovered expensive, almost new sports utility vehicles, costly Japanese imports, a BMW and a 2000 Suzuki motorcycle.

It also led to the discovery of 33 false insurance claims that would have cost insurance companies $700,000 in settlements.

Nine of the car owners charged live in Queens; the rest live in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Long Island and New Jersey.

They include a teacher at I.S. 161 in Corona, a Long Island Rail Road engineer, a registered nurse, a mailman and a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus operator.

Crimes such as these are costly, not only to insurance companies but also to citizens who often pay dearly for such fraudulent operations, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in the statement.

City and state law enforcement officials said today they were rounding up dozens of suspects, including a city public school teacher, in an auto insurance scam.

The Queens district attorney's office said the case involved car owners in Queens and Long Island who falsely reported their vehicles stolen and then filed insurance claims.

A total of 45 people, including 37 car owners and eight suspected middlemen, are being charged in the fraud, which was discovered by an undercover operation, according to a statement by the district attorney's office.

The scheme is said to have netted $1.6 million, with some car owners getting insurance checks for $32,000.

Officials said they have recovered 68 vehicles reported earlier as stolen.

In addition to the teacher, other suspects include a Long Island Railroad engineer, a registered nurse in Manhattan, U.S. Postal Service letter carrier and an MTA bus driver, the officials said.

A news conference is scheduled for this afternoon at the police auto pound in College Point.