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Vehicles move along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. (Oleg Albinsky/Getty Images)

A New York Supreme Court judge in Suffolk County recently sided with an insurance company refuting payouts after it proved a crime ring of Ecuadorians staged eight crashes with commercial vehicles.

Judge Maureen T. Liccione in Riverhead granted summary judgment in its entirety to Integon National Insurance Co. after finding it proved the eight incidents were deliberately caused to fraudulently obtain insurance benefits.

She agreed Integon had no legal obligation to provide insurance coverage, reimbursements or other financial payments to the numerous defendants connected to the alleged crashes, which occurred between March and July 2023. Because the collisions were staged, they did not constitute “legitimate occurrences” under the insurance policies.

Liccione cited case law underscoring insurers have no obligation to provide accident coverage — even to innocent third parties — for intentionally caused or staged vehicular collisions, regardless of whether the crashes were motivated by fraud or malice.

The judge said Integon established the crashes were staged through evidence that included numerous exhibits arising from its investigations and statements from the eight commercial vehicle drivers.

Red Flags in Accident Investigations

Integon’s court complaint noted its investigations into the accidents revealed several red flags.

Each insured claimant defendant who applied for an Integon insurance policy was from Ecuador, and every loss involved three vehicle occupants. Almost all vehicle occupants lived in the same geographic area.

Most of the crashes occurred under nearly identical circumstances: a passenger vehicle rear-ending a box truck or similar commercial vehicle in the same general location.

Each crash occurred 45 days after Integon issued an insurance policy — before any premiums were paid except for initial ones paid at the broker’s office.

Nearly all of the claimants sought treatment at one of two medical offices, and seven of the alleged injured parties retained the same attorney. Investigators also found irregularities involving addresses. Some insured parties listed the same address on policy applications despite having no apparent relationship. Others provided different addresses on police reports than those later given to Integon.

All insured claimants obtained their policies through the same broker, Mansi International, a Queens-based company that has been listed as active since 1997 with the New York State Division of Corporations.

Court records identified staged crash facilitators as Carolina Veronica Rodriguez-Moran, Ruth Stefany Rodriguez-Moran and Mansi International. The two women reportedly “steered and/or directed” insured claimants to the same insurance broker to obtain temporary insurance policies from Integon and also sent them to the same two medical offices for treatment.

The eight insured claim defendants were Alfredo Salazar-Ochoa, Wilson F. Cabrera-Arias, Stefania Baculima, Leonardo Sabando-Cedeno, Flavio Gonzalez-Fajardo, Ernesto Fajardo-Moran, Diana Urena Roman and Carlos Quezada-Santana.

Passenger Claims and Medical Billing

The case also involved 17 passenger claimant defendants. Together, the insured and passenger claimants sought treatment from about 140 health care provider defendants.

The court stated “the fraudulent scheme presented an opportunity to realize financial benefits they would not have otherwise realized — by way of either receiving cash kickbacks for treatment or building a bodily injury case to be presented to Integon for a speedy settlement, or both.”

Opposing passenger defendants maintained their vehicle driver didn’t suddenly switch lanes, stop abruptly, slam on the brakes or swerve, but slowed due to traffic. They asserted the accidents and injuries were genuine.��Two of these passenger defendants have filed a motion for leave to reargue their case.

Similarities in Passenger Vehicle Purchases

How the crashed vehicles were purchased also appeared strange to the insurance investigators. Some insured claimants who bought cars with cash “did not know from whom” they purchased the vehicles or couldn’t recall purchase details, according to court records.

Other similarities were:

• Each vehicle was first purchased at auction (some on the same date) and sold to an insured claimant.
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• Each insured claimant was guided to the same insurance broker (Mansi).
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• Each insured claimant was taken to the same broker’s office by the same people (one or more of the crash facilitators).
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• One or more of the crash facilitators had been involved in unrelated motor vehicle accidents and treated at one of the medical offices where most individual claimants supposedly received medical treatment.

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A tractor-trailer travels in heavy traffic on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in Brooklyn. (John Penney/Getty Images)

Many passenger claimants were randomly called on the day of the crash, “got into a vehicle not knowing one of the other passengers, were on the phone while the alleged incident occurred, and did not know exactly where they were going or why,” the court stated.

The judge found “clear inconsistencies” in testimonies from vehicle occupants in the eight crashes about how they each knew each other and who was in the vehicle as well as “when, where they were going and why.”

Integon told the court it received multiple claims from health care provider defendants resulting from the eight crashes, “seeking tens of thousands of dollars for medical and other services purportedly rendered” to the insured and passenger claimants.

Steep Costs of Insurance Fraud

The judge underscored “insurance fraud is not a victimless crime. Because premium increases partly incorporate fraud costs, insurance fraud hurts all policyholders, not just insurers.”

She cited a that the U.S. loses $308.6 billion yearly in insurance fraud.

“Compounding the problem is the involvement, in some claims, of unscrupulous professionals, such as medical, legal or other experts,” the judge noted.