According to the Insurance Information Institute, insurance fraud accounts for 10% of the property/casualty industry’s expenses – about $30 billion a year. It is a dastardly white-collar crime that is passed onto innocent consumers by means of increased cost of premiums, goods and services. Below are the worst offenders from the Coalition Against Insurance Fruad's list of the “2008 Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame:”

° Letitia Balance and Michael DeRose bilked Medicaid out of millions by preying on innocent children at North Carolina dental clinics. Children had teeth pulled and painful root canals (at least two kids each had 16 root canals and steel crowns). The devilish dentists paid $10 million to settle federal civil charges.

° Two elderly friends, Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt, acted far from the stereotype of sweet grandmother when they befriended two homeless men in Los Angeles, took out $3 million in life insurance on them, then had cars run them down in an attempt to collect as beneficiaries. The old outlaws are spending the remainder of their short life behind bars.

° Robert Stokes, a Michigan dermatologist, stole at least $1 million in insurance money by inflating claims. The malicious physician lied to his patients, telling them they had cancerous lesions that required removal. To top it off, Stokes also potentially exposed his patients to HIV and hepatitis by reusing sutures, scalpels and syringes without proper cleaning. He received 10 year sentence in federal prison.

The entire list is available here, complete with several photos of the immoral bamboozlers and each cases’ complete story.

Emily Holbrook
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