fake insurance card pushers

Published Thursday, February 3, 2005 1:00 am

by By Sean Salai





Palm Beach County is a hotbed of fake automobile insurance cards, according to the fraud investigators who nabbed a Riviera Beach confidence man sentenced to prison this week.

The state and local investigators said it was not a fluke that a Palm Beach County judge on Monday sentenced Howard M. McKinon of 481 W. 30th Street in Riviera to three years in prison for selling fake proof of insurance cards to at least 196 drivers throughout the county.

“I’m sure there are other Howard McKinons out there,” T.N. Prakash, chief investigator for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV), told the Boca Raton News on Wednesday. “Every official document necessary for daily life gets defrauded and insurance cards are among the most common. The McKinon case proves fake cards are a reality in South Florida.”

Prakash vowed to hunt down other fake-card pushers in Palm Beach County, adding, “We’ll find them. The amount of fraud is not in the billions of dollars, and the companies don’t care because they aren’t liable, but it’s a huge problem for drivers. If you’re the victim in a crash, and the other driver has a fraudulent card, who’s going to pay your medical bills?”

In Florida, it is a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison (per each criminal count) to create a false or fraudulent vehicle insurance card.

“This wasn’t the only scam of its kind,” said Nina Banister, spokeswoman for Florida Chief Financial Tom Gallagher. “We’re following up on several leads. People need to know they will be caught and face serious consequences.”

Pat Bradley, a branch manager at the Palm Beach County Tax Collector’s Office, said his agency gets four to five suspicious insurance cards a week.

“The McKinon case definitely wasn’t isolated,” said Bradley. “Fake card giveaways include insurance company codes that don’t match, misspelled words, typewritten words, flimsy copier paper.”

McKinon, 58, pleaded guilty to nine counts of marketing a false motor vehicle insurance card and one count of organized scheme to defraud. At least 12 of his customers still face charges for knowingly presenting the cards to county officials.

Even McKinon’s allegedly innocent customers may still be charged in the case if new evidence emerges. They could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Investigators said McKinon worked off the streets, using word of mouth to sell most of the fake cards in West Palm and Riviera. He sold other cards to drivers as far south as Delray Beach.

None of the drivers went to McKinon’s house, investigators said, but he would meet them at different locations or via door-to-door soliciting at homes and businesses. One favorite meeting place was the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Riviera Beach.

“Certainly some of his clients could have been legitimately duped,” said Banister, whose state agency took the lead in the investigation. “But how many of us meet our insurance agents at KFC? And I understand the price he was charging came nowhere close to legitimate premium rates.”

McKinon used a real Progressive Insurance Co. card as a template for his scam, typing different personal and vehicle information on each fake card.

“It’s not a completely new scheme,” said Karen Pelot, a Progressive Insurance special investigator who worked on the McKinon case. “We’re investigating the same scheme all over Florida. This is just the first time we’ve had an actual arrest and sentencing.”

Pelot said McKinon’s fake cards looked very convincing; his only mistake was that they all had the same policy number and minimum levels of coverage.

She said Progressive started looking into the McKinon case when PBC motorists called to make claims against the duplicated policy.

Also, when customers began taking the cards to the PBC Tax Collector’s Office to get their license plate tags, an employee quickly noticed the duplications and contacted state authorities.

“McKinon’s cards were just duplicated a few too many times,” said Bradley, the PBC tax collector branch manager.

A state investigator got McKinon’s cell phone number from a cardholder, put his photo into several lineups and interviewed most of the fake policyholders. Almost all of them picked him out.

In an attempt to find other fake cardholders, DHSMV investigators ran a trace for McKinon’s policy number through their records. When police finally busted McKinon, they even found sales records collected in his home.

A March 10 mitigation hearing is scheduled for McKinon, who is trying to reduce his jail time on the strength of his plea bargain.

It is unclear whether he will succeed. The Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted him in court, confirmed Wednesday that McKinon has a lengthy criminal record — including 1992 arrests for residential burglary and cocaine dealing.