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GREENBELT, MD—U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte sentenced Thomas Patrick Moriarty, age 40, of Dickerson, Maryland, today to 27 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for wire fraud in connection with a scheme to defraud an insurance company by setting fire to an insured residence, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein. Judge Messitte also ordered Moriarty to pay restitution of $33,000. According to his plea agreement, Moriarty assisted a friend who was involved in the contracting business to burn down an insured house in Bethesda. The friend, later identified as...

LOS ANGELES, June 8 (UPI) -- The number of suspicious U.S. car fires is spiking as owners of pricey and gas-guzzling cars are finding they can no longer afford them, insurers say. The National Insurance Crime Bureau says suspected auto arson is up 27 percent in the first quarter compared with the first quarter of 2008, while so-called owner give-ups, defined as an owner abandoning or intentionally destroying a vehicle in hopes of gaining an insurance payoff, is up 24 percent, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday. "If they owe $10,000 and can only sell the vehicle for $7,000, they'll...

More Vehicles Burned, Ditched in Apparent Schemes by Owners to Get Insurance Payout Police detective Mark Menzie drove 55 miles into the desert Sunday to inspect the charred remains of a formerly silver Ford Expedition. Later, he sat in a kitchen on the city's south side where a 19-year-old man confessed to torching his girlfriend's Chrysler PT Cruiser. At noon Monday, Mr. Menzie was picking through the smashed windshield of a 2008 Land Rover in a desert canyon. His police radio crackled as he worked; another car was spotted burning southwest of the city. Years of no-money-down car loans followed...

Burdened by debt and driving home from a night of gambling in West Virginia, Sergio Lopez launched a scheme that at the time must have seemed like a good idea. He pulled his Volkswagen Jetta up to a random corner in Silver Spring, doused the interior with gasoline, set it on fire and walked away. He later made a claim to Nationwide Insurance. The car was missing, he said -- someone must have stolen it. Add Lopez, who pleaded guilty in the case this year, to the band of Washington area residents who have torched their cars hoping for a...

On Sunday, as I was sitting in my summer cabin in Vermont, completely absorbed in a New York Times story about John Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter, I began reading a paragraph whose message shot through me like a sudden bolt of electrical current. The story centered on Ms. Hunter's refusal to take a DNA test to determine the paternity of her 5-month-old daughter, but that was not what startled me. It was this: "Ms. Hunter was born in Fort Lauderdale. Fla., in 1964 as Lisa Druck and moved to New York City in her 20s, becoming part of a...

Former presidential hopeful John Edwards' mistress grew up in Florida with a dad who once found himself in the FBI's sights. Born Lisa Druck in Fort Lauderdale, Rielle Hunter didn't leave much of a footprint there. Or on the Central Florida community of Ocala, where she went to high school. Or Tampa, where she went to college. Correction: A previous version of this story said James Druck died in 1992. Her father, however, did leave a legacy in this state. An ugly one. Quoting an FBI informant shortly after James Druck's death in 1990, Sports Illustrated named him a figure...

Complete title too long for the form. Here's the total title: Lake in the Hills man charged with pufferfish toxin purchase had a $5 million life insurance policy on his wife, authorities say Federal prosecutors also say she was the intended target in 2005, when her husband sought a hit man A Lake in the Hills man arrested after ordering a deadly pufferfish toxin had a cache of weapons in his home and was named as the beneficiary of a $5 million life insurance policy on his wife, prosecutors said Monday. Federal prosecutors also said that the wife, Rebecca Bachner,...

Man of the people - arrested By SANDRA TAN News Staff Reporter 12/18/2002 Mohamed T. Albanna, photographed in his Clinton Street store last July, is considered outspoken on issues crucial to Lackawanna. Business owner Andrea Haxton saw Mohamed T. Albanna several days a week. He was her main cigarette distributor and regularly dropped off boxes at her A&E Goods store on Ridge Road and Ingham Avenue on his way home from work. "He delivers them, we pay him, chit-chat, and he goes home," the Lackawanna business owner said. "We talk about politics all the time." Albanna came by Monday night...

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER Former radio host has disappeared, family, friends say Police looking into Mike Webb case Last updated June 15, 2007 11:07 p.m. PT By LEVI PULKKINEN P-I REPORTER Police are investigating the disappearance of Seattle radio personality Mike Webb, the former liberal talk-show host for KIRO-AM radio who was convicted of insurance fraud earlier this year. Webb, 52, was last seen by family or friends on April 13, according to a missing-person report filed in May with the Seattle Police Department. Webb Webb "To my knowledge, Mr. Webb has not been found yet," said Officer Mark Jamieson, a police...

SEATTLE — The firefighters who tried to save 3-year-old Ashley McLellan, unconscious after being pulled from a pool on a winter night in 2003, noticed something strange about her stepfather: He was calm, mostly dry and never once asked them if she would live.

Former KIRO radio talk show host Mike Webb was found guilty of insurance fraud this morning and sentenced to 240 hours of community service. King County Superior Court Judge Julie Spector issued the verdict following an abbreviated trial, in which she reviewed police reports and documents from Webb's first trial, which ended in a mistrial. Webb opted for the abbreviated trial rather than be tried before a jury. Link To Continue

Who are the moles? The question was like a parlor game for employees of State Farm Insurance Co. after Hurricane Katrina, one they nervously played during coffee breaks or in the parking lot after work. Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, a prominent lawyer of tobacco litigation fame, created a stir by announcing in March that two "insiders" were helping him build cases against insurers for denying claims for Hurricane Katrina losses. Their identities remained a mystery until the day in early June when Cori and Kerri Rigsby — employees of a company that contracted with State Farm — told a supervisor they...

"MADISON, Wis. -- An Illinois woman is suing her Wisconsin parents for maintaining an icy driveway that she blamed for a fall that broke her ankle two winters ago."

Answering frequent complaints by contractors, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday signed legislation to crack down on workers' compensation insurance fraud plaguing the roofing industry. The measure, Assembly Bill 881 by Assemblyman Bill Emmerson, R-Redlands, calls for insurers to conduct annual audits of roofing company payrolls and empowers the Contractors State License Board to strip roofing licenses from contractors who fail to carry state-mandated workers' compensation insurance. Insurers and contractors are counting on the law to lower premiums for employers in the long run. Unscrupulous contractors will underreport the number of roofers on their payroll. Some won't carry coverage at all,...

Buses used in pro-immigration rally burned By TERESA BORDEN The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 04/19/06 The owner of a bus line who provided free transportation to some of the people attending a pro-immigration rally last week said today that three of his buses were burned overnight while they sat in a Doraville parking area. Carlos Ochoa, who owns Royal Bus Lines, said he was notified by employees about 7 a.m. that the 20-passenger buses he keeps in a private parking lot off Church Street had burned. "I would not want to believe that this happened because of the march," said...

Russian organized crime has become a significant problem for California law enforcement agencies. During the past several years, some Russian emigres have established a growing number of loosely structured criminal networks in this state that are involved in sophisticated criminal activities. The law enforcement intelligence community has also become aware of at least four structured Russian criminal organizations operating in California. Russian organized crime includes crime groups from all the republics which comprised the former Soviet Union. These crime groups are operating in many of the major cities in California including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, and San...

PATERSON, N.J. -- Investigators on Tuesday continued examining the charred remains of a vacant building owned by the Islamic Center of Passaic County. Mosque leaders, who planned to start a community center at the site, said they were concerned that the fire may have been set in a bias attack, noting that the building was secured by an 8-foot fence and locked gate. Passaic County Prosecutor James Avigliano said he could not comment on that until a cause is found. "Right now, it's still being listed as undetermined," he said Tuesday. The 110-year-old brick, three-story building, which had been a...

"Mr. Asman, could you come down to the gym? Your wife appears to be having a small problem." In typical British understatement, this was the first word I received of my wife's stroke. We had arrived in London the night before for a two-week vacation. We spent the day sightseeing and were planning to go to the theater. I decided to take a nap, but my wife wanted to get in a workout in the hotel's gym before theater. Little did either of us know that a tiny blood clot had developed in her leg on the flight to London...

Welcome Welcome to the Aetna Compassionate Care Program web site. We designed this site as a "resource center" to help you better understand the issues and choices associated with end-of-life care. The site includes helpful information on end-of-life and palliative (comfort) care issues, advance planning tools, tips to begin conversations on end-of-life care with loved ones, advance directive forms, living wills and much more. We applaud those of you who are visiting this web site for the purpose of advance planning. You will find tools that will help you think through these issues and discuss them freely with your loved...

United States Attorney Southern District of New York FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: U.S. ATTORNEY’S OFFICE MARVIN SMILON, HERBERT HADAD, MICHAEL KULSTAD PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE (212) 637-2600 FBI JOSEPH A. VALIQUETTE JAMES M. MARGOLIN (212) 384-2715, 2720 U.S. POSTAL INSPECTION SERVICE DAVID ENG (212) 330-3387 CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD AND PRESIDENT OF INSURANCE AGENCY INDICTED BY U.S. FOR $20 MILLION FRAUD; ACCUSED OF USING FUNDS FOR YACHTS AND NIGHTCLUB SPREES DAVID N. KELLEY, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, PASQUALE D’AMURO, the AssistantDirector in Charge of the New York field Office of the FBI, and WILLIAM...