News Release - South Carolina Insurance News Service - Ernesto Lopez-Torres, 28, of Myrtle Beach on July 14 pleaded guilty in Horry County Court of General Sessions to presenting a false claim over $5,000 and arson, third degree.
Judge Larry B. Hyman Jr. sentenced Lopez-Torres to 18 months on each charge, to run concurrently.
The false claim charge is a felony and can carry up to 10 years in prison and/or a fine of $5,000. According to investigators, Lopez-Torres' truck was destroyed by fire on or about Nov. 9, 2008. The defendant then made a claim to Safeco Insurance to be paid for the truck. He offered several explanations for the fire, but claimed it was accidental. Lopez-Torres later admitted to a SLED officer that he had been worried about money and had intentionally set the fire.
He said that he poured gasoline from a soft drink bottle onto the passenger floorboard and lit the fire with a napkin. Lopez-Torres said he then jumped out of the truck but was almost killed in the fire before he escaped. The case was investigated by SLED and Safeco Insurance and was prosecuted by the S.C. Attorney General's Office.
The S.C. Insurance News Service reports a few interesting facts from the Attorney General's 2009 report on insurance fraud: By far the largest number of complaints came from automobile insurance fraud, at 493 of the 834 total (59 percent). Personal/commercial property fraud was next most common, at 13 percent of the total, followed by workers' comp (10 percent) and health/medical (9 percent). Cases have been reported from all over the state and the 335 files opened break down by region as follows: Low Country: 30% (102) Piedmont : 24% (79) Midlands: 24% (82) Pee Dee: 22% (72) Richland County reported the largest number of complaints made, with 88, in an amount of $1,628,174. Greenville County had the largest dollar value of fraud reported, with $2,226,496 (63 complaints).
The South Carolina Insurance Fraud Hotline, 1 (888) 95-FRAUD, is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for reporting insurance fraud, which can be a felony in South Carolina. All reports remain confidential.
