A New Orleans school bus company serving nine charter schools has been accused of having used fraudulent insurance documents to secure its certification to operate.
Private school bus company Scholars First allegedly used “falsified” documents to be certified to operate for charter schools in the area, and even the insurance agency that allegedly wrote general liability insurance for the bus operator claimed that its policies were not in force at the times noted on the certificates. Some of the policies were not even written for Scholars First, an investigation found.
The fraud came to light after one of Scholars First’s buses was involved in a fender bender last month. Fortunately, the bus did not have any children on it, and nobody was hurt. Elias Newman, the driver of the car that was clipped by the bus, asked the bus driver for insurance details for the purposes of filing a claim.
However, the bus driver could not just produce an insurance card, and also did not have a driver’s license or proof of registration for the vehicle. The driver had to call a Scholars First manager to the scene to provide digital photos of a driver’s license and an insurance card, which indicated that the bus company was covered by Mesa Underwriters Specialty Insurance Company of Arizona.
But when Newman attempted to file a claim, he was notified by Mesa Underwriters via email that Scholars First’s policy had been cancelled over a year earlier.
“That was actually the first moment of, like, ‘Hmmm, what’s actually happening here? And do they actually have insurance and why would they give us this thing that had been cancelled?’” Newman told WWL-TV in an interview.
WWL-TV conducted an investigation of its own, issuing a public records request that five charter school management organizations – Einstein Charter Group, Foundation Prep, New Beginnings Schools Foundation, Rooted School and Success Preparatory Academy – responded to. Each organization provided copies of Scholars First’s insurance certificates.
Three of the certificates showed that Scholars First’s current liability insurance carrier is Mesa Underwriters, but a spokesperson for the insurance company told WWL-TV that those policies had all been expired since at least mid-2018. The spokesperson also said that two of the policies were written by Mesa Underwriters for two other transportation companies that had nothing to do with Scholars First.
