A worker at a Florida insurance company has been arrested on accusations of defrauding her employer out of more than $1 million in an “elaborate scheme.”
Jennifer Summerlott, 36, was a customer service representative at Fort Lauderdale-based Fairway Insurance Group, where she is accused of having used fake insurance invoices to reroute company funds to her own bank account, says the Department of Financial Services.
Suspicions first began to arise in 2015 when account irregularities were discovered by members of staff at Fairway, who reported the findings to the Fort Lauderdale Police Department.
Between 2010 and 2015, Summerlott, who worked as Fairway’s accounts payable and commercial lines manager for nine years, created and submitted dozens of fake electronic invoices, a Sun Sentinel report said.
The invoices were made to look as though they were from various companies that routinely did business with Fairway, according to investigators with Florida’s Division of Financial Services.
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Summerlott then prepared company checks to pay the fake invoices, diverting the payments to her own personal bank account.
Investigators said Summerlott also refinanced 40 insurance policies that Fairway clients had already paid in full.
She used checks – sent to the company from third-party financing agencies to cover the cost of the premiums – to cover up the losses she had created, Florida’s chief financial officer, Jeff Atwater, said in a statement.
In total, the former Fairway worker stole $1,189,654 from her employer, Florida’s Division of Investigative and Forensic Services concluded.
Summerlott was arrested last month and charged with four first-degree felonies, including organized scheme to defraud, grand theft, criminal use personal ID and diverting insurance trust funds.
