A Marshalltown, Iowa man has been sentenced to 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to disaster-related insurance fraud crimes against insurer State Farm.
Timothy D. Sletten, 32, engaged in schemes to defraud State Farm following the EF-3 tornado that hit Marshalltown in 2018 and the 2020 derecho disaster, according to a press release from the US Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Iowa.
In the wake of the 2018 tornado, Sletten, who pleaded guilty to insurance fraud crimes, engaged in two separate schemes to defraud State Farm, the insurer of his multiple residential properties. As part of the schemes, Sletten presented false invoices to claim benefits.
Sletten again presented false invoices to State Farm after the 2020 derecho. These invoices claimed he had paid contractors for repairs on derecho-driven damage on rental homes when he had not done so, according to the press release.
State Farm paid Sletten loss claim benefits totaling more than $180,000 as a result of the insurance fraud. However, following the 2020 derecho, State Farm opened an investigation into Sletten that led it to deny payment of his disaster-related claims.
Sletten has been fined $50,000 and ordered to pay back restitution totaling just over $125,000, according to an update from the Iowa Insurance Division.
Further, after serving prison time he will be required to serve three years of federal supervised release.
The case was investigated by the Marshalltown Police Department and the Iowa Insurance Fraud Fund Bureau, with Assistant United States Attorney Laura M. Roan having prosecuted the case.
The Marshalltown derecho, which hit in August 2020, brought 99mph winds to the town just two years after the EF-3 tornado wreaked havoc, the Des Moines Register has reported.
In the aftermath of the severe storm event, Marshalltown’s director of public works and city engineer Justin Nickel told Iowa Public Radio News that clean-up and recovery efforts could take years.
“I imagine we certainly are looking at another year, two years, five years, eight years, something of that effect, to take care of everything that was impacted by the derecho," Nickel reportedly said.
In a separate case, last February former Iowa insurance producer, Oscar Sanchez, also of Marshalltown, received a suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to three counts of insurance fraud.
An IID Fraud Bureau investigation found Sanchez had provided phony documents and collected premium payments for bogus insurance policies.
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