A former insurance broker for carriers nationwide has pled guilty to charges of insurance fraud after he was caught pocketing money he was supposed to be putting towards carriers’ insurance coverage.
John Paul Kill, the owner of Appeal Insurance Agency LLC, started offering cargo insurance to carriers in 2013. He told companies that he had secured insurance for them with Lloyd’s of London and then invoiced them for the premiums.
Unbeknownst to the companies however, Kill never insured their cargo. He would occasionally get insurance from a different company that offered less coverage than he had advertised, but more often than not, the cargo would go completely uninsured.
Over the course of a just a year, nearly 800 trucking companies were taken in Kill’s scheme for a total of over $3.7 million.
According to acting U.S. Attorney John Horn, Kill “swindled hundreds of trucking companies into purchasing phantom cargo insurance policies” and “led many small businesses to operate on our roads unwittingly without proper insurance and put them at risk for catastrophic losses.”
Kill has pled guilty to charges of insurance fraud and is scheduled for sentencing on July 10th.
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Source: bizjournals, insurancenewsnet, gwinnettdailypost
Rednex says
This is scary. I wonder where these companies were located?
Joe Skeptical says
800 of ’em? They’re everywhere.
Joe Skeptical says
3 new customers every weekday for year? Prices must have been really low but wait….doesn’t that happen with cheap freight also? How can a company move reefer at $1.50 mile? Paying newbies 28¢ that’s how. It’s easier to print fake promises than print fake tractors, trailers & drivers but I’m sure somebody’s tried that, too.