An Ontario police officer convicted of insurance fraud may have found a new source of income, but his life is far from paradise.
50 year-old Constable Carlton Watson, who won $275,000 in a Daily Keno draw, still faces jail time for more than 40 charges involving fraud, breach of trust and obstructing justice.
Watson, a 23-year veteran of the force, was found guilty of paying in cash to provide accident reports that passed off staged or bogus car crashes as legitimate. The scam bilked insurance companies out of more than $1 million. His lawyer is attempting to argue that he only deserves a conditional sentence.
Watson has received salary during the entirety of his four year suspension, since Ontario’s Police Services Act mandates that the only time a police officer is precluded receiving pay is if the officer has been sentenced to prison. If an officer is found guilty of a wrongdoing but isn’t required to serve jail time, the cop receives pay until a police disciplinary hearing issues a dismissal.
Garry Robertson, national director of investigations for the
Insurance Bureau of Canada, told
The Mississauga News that the Watson case backs the assertion that auto insurance fraud is a multi-billion-dollar concern, now on the rise in Ontario.
“When someone makes a false or exaggerated claim, honest consumers pay more than they should for insurance,” he said. “Staged accidents, exaggerated claims are problems we see far too often. As this case showed, insurance fraud comes in many forms, and the perpetrators don’t always look like criminals.”
