By Danny Valentine, Times Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2010
TAMPA — The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office arrested eight people Friday as part of an ongoing crackdown on staged accidents in the county.
Tampa has the second most questionable accident claims in the country and the most in the state.
These types of questionable claim accidents cost people $250 to $300 extra per year to obtain insurance coverage in the state, said Robert Deluna, senior special agent with National Insurance Crime Bureau.
"All of our insurance is going up and we want them to know we're not going to tolerate it and we don't take it lightly," said sheriff's Maj. Donna Lusczynski. "Once we identify them, we are going to take action and do the best we can to put them in jail."
The arrests, dubbed "Operation Crash for Cash," comes on the heels of previous efforts that resulted in at least 54 arrests.
The suspects arrested in Friday's roundup were all employees of or tied to Medical Rehab Choice, LLC, 3104 West Waters Ave.
Those arrested include Hiram Beltran, 39, Luz Quinones, 41, Matthew Aviles, 19, Herbert Prieto, 29, Yasmin Heredia-Acevedo, 31, Ubaldo Gascon, 36, Rosario Gascon, 35, and Chester Sanchez, 30.
All are from Tampa and face charges of scheming to defraud.
The sheriff's office said its investigation uncovered a new trend in staged crashes involving U-Haul trucks because the rental company will sell $1 million dollar in insurance coverage for $100, deputies said.
The number of suspected staged accident claims in Tampa jumped from 232 to 487 between 2008 and 2009, an increase of 290 percent.
About one-fourth of all staged accident questionable claims in Florida happened in Tampa last year.
St. Petersburg had 18 suspected staged accidents in 2009. Clearwater had seven.
For years, most staged accidents in Florida occurred in South Florida, but after a focused crackdown there, numbers have risen in Tampa.
Overall, Florida saw questionable claims for staged accidents increase by about 58 percent from 2008 to 2009. That's a jump from 1,268 claims to nearly 2,000.
Miami had the second highest number of suspected staged accidents in Florida in 2009 with 258.
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