Central Pennsylvania Group Charged With $300k Insurance Fraud Scheme
A trio from Central Pennsylvania is accused of submitting fraudulent auto insurance claims to steal more than $300,000 from insurance companies.
Kwa’rai Samuel, 24, Lori Fish, 50, and Kevin Hartung, 45, along with two auto body repair businesses named LKR Auto Body and Hopper’s Foreign Auto Body and Parts, were the subjects of an investigation by a grand jury.
The suspects would obtain auto insurance policies by providing false, incomplete, and misleading information, including stolen identities, according to the affidavit of probable cause. It has been claimed that they obtained information regarding the vehicles through internet searches and visits to car dealerships.
The three individuals allegedly obtained a combined sum of 28 policies from four distinct insurance providers.
To legitimize the fraud, the group allegedly began reporting accidents that never occurred and submitting documents from two auto body repair businesses that only existed on paper (LKR Auto Body and Hopper’s Foreign Auto Body and Parts) once the policies were implemented.
The group, as reported by investigators, additionally uploaded photographs that failed to depict the automobiles purportedly implicated in the collisions.
Regarding the 42 fraudulent allegations put forth, neither police reports nor witnesses to the alleged incidents were present.
Furthermore, as per police reports, the additional vehicles implicated in the claims were upscale luxury automobiles, which would have resulted in a more substantial compensation award from the insurance providers.
As per the affidavit, a portion of the fraudulent assertions were found to have legitimate identifying information of identity theft victims, whereas the remaining claims purportedly originated from the three individuals.
Additionally, the grand jury discovered that recordings frequently captured conversations between the alleged claimants and insurance company representatives. Five of the forty-two claims purportedly featured Samuel as the spokesperson for both the claimant and the insured.
Samuel altered the intonation of his voice in numerous audio recordings, as determined by the investigators when assuming the identity of a different individual. At least one recording purports to contain Samuel impersonating a woman by altering the frequency of his voice upwards.
The insurance companies remitted a total of $300,998.23 in direct payments to Samuel, Fish, Hartung, and other vehicle rental companies.
Samuel and Hartung are charged with multiple offenses, including insurance fraud, false insurance claims, larceny by deception, and identity theft, according to online court documents. Fish is confronted with comparable accusations of insurance fraud and weapons offenses.
According to court records, Fish and Samuel are both detained at the Cumberland County Prison, while Hartung is residing in a facility in the Somerset area. Preliminary hearings are scheduled for April 11 for all three.