Second Brother Sentenced in Multi-Million Dollar Insurance Fraud Scheme |
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U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Florida
27 June 2019
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
A former insurance agent of One Stop Insurance Agency was sentenced today to 101 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $20,056,054.67 in restitution for his role in defrauding two finance companies.
Ariana Fajardo Orshan, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and George L. Piro, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office, made the announcement.
Stuart Alan Starr, 62, formerly of North Miami Beach, pled guilty in April 2019, to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and five counts of wire fraud. In August 2018, his brother Glen Wayne Starr pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and later in October 2018, received the same sentence as Stuart Alan Starr.
According to documents filed with the court and statements made in court during the plea and sentencing, Stuart Alan Starr and his brother, Glen Wayne Starr, from March 1990 to August 2015, operated One Stop Insurance Agency, Inc. The company was located at 17088 West Dixie Highway, North Miami Beach, Florida 33160. Both Starr brothers were licensed insurance agents with the state of Florida. One Stop was an approved agent of Progressive Insurance Company, Castle Point and Lloyds of London and authorized to write insurance policies underwritten by those carriers. One Stop specialized in offering liability and cargo insurance policies to independent truckers and small trucking companies for coverage of trucks, tractor-trailers and heavy equipment. Since the premiums for this type of coverage was often extremely expensive, when small trucking carriers could not afford the large lump sum payments for those premiums, One Stop would arrange to have the truckers or trucking companies finance the premiums through loans obtained from one of several finance companies with which One Stop worked. These finance companies included Pro Premium Finance Company, Standard Premium Finance Management, Corporation, and DAB Premium Finance, LLC.
Beginning in or around July 2014, One Stop, on a monthly basis, created and submitted, via email or facsimile, over 300 false and fraudulent application packages to Pro Premium and other finance companies for funding. The documents in the package were prepared using the names of real companies as well as fictitious companies, which were purportedly true customers of One Stop. Glen Wayne Starr and Stuart Alan Starr represented on the premium financing agreement that the purported customers had made the required down payment towards their premium when in fact they had not. Pro Premium would approve the financing for these loans and the Starr brothers, in keeping with their practice, would write checks to One Stop, deposit those checks into one or several of One Stop’s bank accounts then use those funds for personal gain.
In August 2015, both Starr brothers fled the country when the fraud was about to be discovered and were later apprehended in Colombia in 2018. The loss caused by the Starr brothers’ conduct forced Pro Premium, which had been in operation since 1988, to close its doors.
U.S. Attorney Fajardo Orshan commended the investigative efforts of the FBI. She thanked the Bureau of Insurance Fraud, Florida Department of Financial Services for their assistance. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lois Foster-Steers.
Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or on http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov.