Insurance fraud, it would seem, is nearly as rampant these days as advertisements for online insurance quotes. There’s always someone out there who wants something for nothing, and who’s willing to take advantage of other folks to do it. What doesn’t help matters is this idea that we have in our culture that businesses, especially big financial corporations like those that offer insurance, are evil, profit-hungry entities that are stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
Take, for example, the case of Tara S. Prince in Illinois. A U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois recently sentenced Prince to 21 months in federal prison, as well as paying more than $700,000 in restitution.
The woman was the president and the co-operator of a company called LT Consulting, Inc. The firm was an employee leasing company that was based out of DuQuoin, Illinois. The company would assume a contractual responsibility for all of the HR-related functions of small businesses. Some of the kinds of things that they would do for clients included interviewing and hiring prospective employees, managing the payroll, administering benefit programs for employees, and making sure that both state and federal regulations for the workplace were administered correctly.
So, what exactly, happened? Prince took funds that were supposed to pay for workers’ compensation insurance premiums and used the funds elsewhere. She also reduced the amounts of those premiums. She used the funds for her own use, instead of paying for the insurance that the workers should have had.
There was also evidence that the woman actually forged documents, and that she made false statements to three separate insurance companies. This reduced the amount of premiums that LT Consulting owed, and she then pocketed the difference.
Two of Prince’s associates were also charged, and were previously sentenced by the court. The case involved investigations by the Postal Inspection Service, the FBI and even the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
