Insurance Fraud

A Pasadena woman has been sentenced to six months in jail for swindling nearly $106,000 from the Baltimore insurance broker for whom she worked.Kimberly Jo August, 37, pleaded guilty Oct. 14 to theft, forgery and insurance fraud in Baltimore Circuit Court. Circuit Judge Mabel E. Houze Hubbard sentenced her Friday to five years in prison with all but six months suspended.August, who specialized in professional liability insurance accounts, submitted invoices, a few real but most phony, to R. K. Tongue Co., her employer, indicating her clients were owed money.

George F. Herrmann Jr. died in April 1995. But more than a year after his death, his widow, a Pasadena woman, applied for a mortgage life insurance policy on him and tried to collect $93,000 on it nearly two years later, the Attorney General's Office has alleged.In a three-count indictment this week, an Anne Arundel County grand jury charged Elizabeth Ann Branum Herrmann, 43, of the 300 block Nature Walk Lane, with insurance fraud and attempted theft, accusing her of submitting a claim on the policy using fraudulent documentation to say he died in April 1998.

Martin R. Frankel, the Connecticut money manager suspected of defrauding insurance companies of hundreds of millions of dollars before fleeing overseas, has been captured and is in federal custody, an official with the FBI said yesterday.The circumstances of his capture were unclear last night because FBI officials withheld details of his arrest. But the official confirmed that Frankel had been arrested four months to the day after fleeing his Greenwich, Conn., mansion for Italy, where he relied on business associates, a cache of diamonds and a streak of good luck to stay a step ahead of law enforcement officials.

The cantor for an Upper Park Heights synagogue could receive a five-year prison term and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced for income tax evasion and insurance fraud.Benzion Weiss, 44, who has been the cantor at Beth Jacob Congregation for more than 15 years, pleaded guilty on Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Blake to one count of tax evasion and one count of mail fraud. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 6.In a hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Weiss admitted not paying taxes in 1984 and submitting a false insurance claim in May 1997 to CNA Insurance Cos.He also admitted overstating the amount he received in a housing allowance, or parsonage, from Beth Jacob Congregation.

In one of the harshest white-collar sentences in Maryland history, international swindler Martin Bramson was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison yesterday for masterminding a huge insurance fraud and money-laundering scheme that reached around the globe.Bramson, 52, a one-time fugitive from Columbia who opened a bar in Mexico while on the run, appeared calm and relaxed as Chief U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz ordered him to federal prison."You're younger than I am. You will still have a lot of years left after your sentence," said Motz, who will allow 2 1/2 years of prison time that Bramson served in overseas jails to count toward his sentence.

An assistant attorney general was arrested yesterday and charged with setting fire to his North Baltimore house, as his wife and child slept inside, in an alleged scheme to collect insurance money.Anthony K. Waters, 45, was indicted on charges of arson and insurance fraud, his lawyer and police said. He was arrested at his attorney's downtown office yesterday afternoon and was awaiting a bail hearing last night.The charges stem from a fire at 3 a.m. July 29, 1996, at Waters' semidetached home in the 6100 block of Dunroming Road in Cedarcroft.

Sonia James admitted in Howard Circuit Court yesterday that she slashed her furniture, spray-painted her North Laurel home with racial slurs and called 911 to report what police first believed was the worst hate-bias crime in the county's recent history.Responding to Judge Dennis M. Sweeney's questions in a soft voice, the 29-year-old woman, who is black, admitted to ransacking her townhouse in the Seasons apartment complex on April 23 of last year -- using a knife from the kitchen to carve racial epithets in the furniture -- so that she could collect an insurance settlement.

Here sits Ronald Sallow, associate commissioner of the state's Insurance Fraud Division that saved Maryland drivers about $6.5 million last year, and he wants to talk about insurance when the juiciest stories are all about his fistfight with the former heroin dealer Liddie Jones at the old Civic Center, or the time the drug dealer Junior Monroe pointed a gun at his face and pulled the trigger on Vine Street, or those nights Sallow was a narcotics cop who...

Richard Charles may have done what immigration authorities wanted him to do -- he has apparently returned to his native Haiti. But he became a fugitive from U.S. justice in the process.Charles, who was accused of being in this country illegally, did not show up at his sentencing hearing Friday for fraud and attempted theft. Instead, his attorney came to court with a letter he said was from Charles in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital."Mr. Charles will not be in court today," the attorney, Timothy G. Wolf, told Circuit Judge Raymond J. Kane Jr. Nor, most likely, will Charles ever be, Wolf added.

One day after the Glendening administration dramatically scaled back its proposal to curb car insurance costs, a Senate committee decided to weaken the measure far more.The Judicial Proceedings Committee voted unanimously yesterday to strip the bill of all but its most innocuous provisions a ban on "runners" who solicit accident victims for doctors and lawyers, and a requirement that cases of insurance fraud be reported to professional licensing boards.While those provisions have been touted as helpful in the fight against insurance fraud, they are not expected to reduce car insurance premiums.

A Baltimore police officer who overcame the odds growing up in West Baltimore to patrol his old neighborhood, was indicted Friday on charges of insurance fraud and attempted felony theft, the state attorney general said. Hikeen D. Crampton Sr., 30, of Rosedale, is accused of fraudulently claiming in late 2008 that his Cadillac Escalade had been stolen when he had traded it in for another vehicle. The indictment follows an investigation by the Regional Auto Theft Task Force, the insurance fraud division of the Maryland Insurance Administration and the attorney general's office.

A Catonsville doctor pleaded guilty yesterday to health care insurance fraud in federal court in Baltimore. According to the plea agreement presented in U.S. District Court, prosecutors said that Albert Gerald Little, 61, who had medical offices in Pikesville and Owings Mills, operated a scheme to defraud health care benefit programs. His attorney, Joshua Treem, did not return a phone call yesterday. Little submitted health care claims for nonexistent or fraudulent health care services, according to prosecutors.

Harford deputy had a fatal heart attack An autopsy has found that the Harford County sheriff's deputy who died in a car crash Monday night while on an emergency call suffered a heart attack before his police cruiser veered into a ravine, authorities said yesterday. William H. Beebe Jr., 28, had a 90 percent blockage in his aorta, which the state medical examiner said was the cause of his fatal heart attack, according to Sheriff's Office spokesman Robert B. Thomas. Crash investigators determined there was no indication of mechanical failure, excessive speed or any factor other than the heart attack.

IN THE STORY'S colorful first telling, Shannon Smith in her Jaguar and Darlene Hohl in her Mercedes crashed their luxury cars into each other last January, causing damage to both vehicles and the payment of insurance money to both grateful women. But the story was a lie, concocted strictly for profit. Smith never owned a Jaguar, nor even drove one. Hohl never owned a Mercedes, nor even drove one. As it happens, the worst collision in their lives was not automotive, but with one Michael Horner.

BALTIMORE Two die, one wounded in 3 shooting incidents Two men died, and another was in critical condition after three apparently unrelated shootings reported in a four-hour period in Baltimore yesterday afternoon, city police said. The bloodshed continued last night as a double shooting was reported about 9:30 p.m. Police said two unidentified men were shot in the 2700 block of Tivoly Ave., near Clifton Park in Northeast Baltimore. One man was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital and the other to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, but their conditions were not immediately known.

WESTMINSTER Ferguson stages upset, unseats Mayor Dayhoff Westminster Councilman Thomas K. Ferguson staged an upset in the municipal election yesterday, unseating Mayor Kevin E. Dayhoff, a one-term incumbent and former councilman. Kevin Alt, the third mayoral candidate, was a distant third. Ferguson received 588 votes to Dayhoff's 467. In a hotly contested election for the two council seats on the ballot, voters kept Councilman Roy L. Chiavacci in office with 536 votes, while electing newcomer Kevin R. Utz, chief of the city's volunteer fire department, with 505 votes.

A former Baltimore County podiatrist was sentenced to three years of probation after he pleaded guilty to fraudulently billing insurance companies, the attorney general's office said yesterday. Norman Greenberg, 56, of the first block of Spirit Lane in Owings Mills pleaded guilty in Baltimore County Circuit Court on Wednesday to felony insurance fraud, felony theft and conspiracy to distribute narcotics, authorities said. Greenberg's medical license was suspended in 1995 for over-prescribing drugs, performing treatments outside the scope of podiatry and failing to adequately examine patients before surgery, according to authorities.

A Severn man who Anne Arundel County officials said is a former sheriff's office employee has been indicted on charges that he made a false insurance claim, court records show. A summons was issued yesterday for Hugh O. Whitaker, Jr., 33, of Severn, who is accused in a nine-count criminal indictment of making false statements to the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund, attempted felony theft and related charges. For the past few months, until he was dismissed Friday, Whitaker had been a probationary deputy with the sheriff's department but had not been sworn in because of an investigation by a state agency, said Anne Arundel County Sheriff George F. Johnson IV. Johnson said Whitaker would have made about $33,000 a year and performed mostly administrative duties for the department during his tenure.

A Baltimore police officer has been charged with insurance fraud and attempted felony theft, the state attorney general's office announced yesterday. An eight-count indictment accuses Tamira Thompson, 26, a Central District officer, of making false statements related to a traffic accident last year by supporting an insurance claim with Progressive Insurance Co. She is also accused of lying about her address on her application for automobile insurance. If convicted, she could be sentenced to as many as 30 years in prison and more than a $10,000 fine.

A Baltimore police officer was charged yesterday with felony insurance fraud and attempted theft for allegedly attempting to collect on a false claim from the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund, the state attorney general's office announced. Prosecutors say Elijah Stevens Jr. was involved in an automobile accident Jan. 28, obtained automobile insurance Jan. 29 and then stated that the crash occurred Feb. 12 in an attempt to collect $5,300 in insurance money. The Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund is a state agency that sells insurance to drivers who can't obtain it privately.