Zalma on Insurance
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Insurance Claims professional presents articles and videos on insurance, insurance Claims and insurance law for insurance Claims adjusters, insurance professionals and insurance lawyers who wish to improve their skills and knowledge. Presented by an internationally recognized expert and author.
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May 17, 2022
True Crime of Insurance Fraud Video Number 74

Someone Stole My Rolls Royce

Read the full article at https://lnkd.in/g5Sp3sxm and see the full video at https://lnkd.in/gaxZy-YY and at https://lnkd.in/gGr5BKfn and at https://zalam.com/blog plus more than 4200 posts.

Investing in California real estate in the 1980’s was fun. Whatever you bought you could sell for more. The doctrine: “there is always a greater fool than I,” worked.

Li Chen Hua immigrated to California from Hong Kong in 1981. He did it legally, winning a lottery for a Green Card. He came to the U.S. with his savings (converted from Hong Kong dollars to diamonds for ease of transportation).

Li set himself up in a condominium on Wilshire Boulevard just west of the community known as Westwood and east of Beverly Hills. It only cost him $500,000. He bought three other condos in the same building that first year and paid his mortgages and living expenses from the rent he collected.

In 2008 the bottom fell out of the California real estate market. Mr. Li, found himself owning real estate mortgaged to over $14,000,000 but worth only $9,000,000. The rents he collected were not sufficient to pay the various mortgages and allow him to continue in the life style with to which he had become accustomed. He needed to make a great deal of money fast and then, leaving his mortgagees to fend for themselves, return to Hong Kong for a pleasant retirement.

Mr. Li’s cousin was the number one luxury car dealer in all of the People’s Republic of China. She had no competition, an almost unlimited supply of vehicles, and overhead limited to shipping costs. Li’s account at CitiBank, Hong Kong was growing. He put his savings in broad-based stock mutual funds specializing in high risk emerging markets. His investments doubled in two years.

Li decided it was time to stop while he was ahead. He would ship his pRoger Parsons, the claims supervisor at Massive and Stoney Insurance Company, looking out his window at the slow moving, brown Illinois River, was about to order a check for the settlement when he received a report from the NICB that the car had been shipped by Li to Hong Kong a month before the reported theft. Customs officials in Hong Kong reported the car arrived and was picked up by its consignee. The NICB had copies available of the shipping documents with Mr. Li’s signature.

Massive and Stoney retained counsel to examine Mr. Li under oath about the theft. Li and his attorney appeared at Massive’s lawyer’s office belligerent, demanding immediate payment of a legitimate insurance claim.

“Mr. Li is a wealthy and highly respected member of the community. This examination under oath is a waste of time and an attempt to create useless and unwarranted delays. If payment is not received immediately, Mr. Li will sue Massive and Stoney for bad faith” Len Shyster, Li’s attorney, orated.

The examination under oath was not completed. Using his testimony at the examination under oath the NICB, working with Massive and Stoney and fifteen other insurers, the California Highway Patrol, the US Customs Service and the Fraud Division of the California Department of Insurance resulted in a major arrest of 41 individuals, including Li, for insurance fraud, grand theft, and fraud against lenders. A ring of insurance criminals who made hundreds of millions of dollars from insurers across the United States was stopped because one of the criminals allowed his customs broker to record the VIN number of his automobile before it was shipped out of the US.

Li, the instigator of the fraud, testified against his coconspirators. He served six months of electronic confinement to his penthouse apartment and paid $250,000 in restitution to one insurer.

He is now living a comfortable retirement in Hong Kong.
ZALMA OPINION

The state should be proud that they took down a massive insurance fraud scheme but, because they needed him, Li retired a rich man to Hong Kong. He may regret it now that the Communist Party took over Hong Kong.
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(c) 2022 Barry Zalma & ClaimSchool, Inc.

Barry Zalma, Esq., CFE, now limits his practice to service as an insurance consultant specializing in insurance coverage, insurance claims handling, insurance bad faith and insurance fraud almost equally for insurers and policyholders. He practiced law in California for more than 44 years as an insurance coverage and claims handling lawyer and more than 54 years in the insurance business. He is available at http://www.zalma.com and [email protected].

Subscribe to Zalma on Insurance at locals.com https://zalmaoninsurance.local.com/subscribe.

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What else you may like…
Videos
Posts
July 22, 2026
The Real Cost of Fraud

The Largest Residential Burglary of All Time
Post 5407

Fraud & the Fear of Bad Faith Suits
Posted on July 22, 2026 by Barry Zalma

See the full video at https://lnkd.in/gWQQEySW and at https://lnkd.in/gyhdK6wv

This is a Fictionalized True Crime Story of Insurance Fraud explaining why Insurance Fraud is a “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose” situation for Insurers. The story is one of a collection designed to help to Understand How Insurance Fraud in America is Costing Everyone who Buys Insurance Thousands of Dollars Every year and Why Insurance Fraud is Safer and More Profitable for the Perpetrators than any Other Crime.

This is a Fictionalized True Crime Story of Insurance Fraud explaining why Insurance Fraud is a “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose” situation for Insurers. The story is one of a collection designed to help to Understand How Insurance Fraud in America is Costing Everyone who Buys Insurance Thousands of Dollars Every year and Why Insurance Fraud is Safer and More Profitable for the Perpetrators than any Other Crime.

After ...

00:12:33
July 20, 2026
Search Warrant Produces Evidence of Insurance Fraud

Chutzpah is not Enough
Post 5397

Posted on July 20, 2026 by Barry Zalma

See the video and at https://lnkd.in/gNUs2XzT and at https://lnkd.in/g2MawyzX

Magistrate Issues a Search Warrant if there is a Fair Probability that Contraband or Evidence of a Crime will be Found in a Particular Place.

In United States Of America v. Frank Suess, et al., CRIMINAL No. 3:24-308, United States District Court, M.D. Pennsylvania (July 16, 2026) a federal grand jury indicted Frank Suess, Melissa Driscoll, and others in a 55-count health care fraud and anti-kickback prosecution arising from an alleged scheme involving medically unnecessary prescription “foot baths.”

As part of the investigation, the FBI obtained an August 19, 2022 warrant to search Driscoll’s Sterling Pharmacy Yahoo email account for emails from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2020. Driscoll moved to suppress the resulting evidence, arguing that the warrant lacked probable cause, was overbroad, and rested on material misstatements and omissions.

LAW:

The ...

00:08:22
July 17, 2026
The Great Jewel Theft

Fraud Shouldn’t Pay

Post 5396

See the video and at https://rumble.com/v7ctgmq-the-great-jewel-theft.html at https://youtu.be/aRbQ2sJfGwA

This is a Fictionalized True Crime Story of Insurance Fraud explaining why Insurance Fraud is a “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose” situation for Insurers. The story is one of a collection designed to help to Understand How Insurance Fraud in America is Costing Everyone who Buys Insurance Thousands of Dollars Every year and Why Insurance Fraud is Safer and More Profitable for the ¬¬¬Perpetrators than any Other Crime.

The Insured purchased, for the first time in his life, a policy of Personal Articles Floater Insurance (PAF) scheduling $125,000 worth of ladies jewelry. He advised the insurer that the jewelry was always kept in a class E safe at his residence. He also told the insurer that he was employed full time as the owner of a gasoline service station and that he had never been canceled or suffered a previous loss.

One month after the policy was ...

00:09:42
9 hours ago
Plaintiff Sues Because State Employees Stigmatized Her

Day Care Owner Loses Subsidies Because She Criticized State

Post 5421

Posted on August 11, 2026 by Barry Zalma

First Amendment Right Will be Allowed to Go to Trial

In Betsey J. Grant v. Maine State Department Of Heath And Human Services, No. 1:25-cv-00490-JAW, United States District Court, D. Maine (August 6, 2026), Betsey J. Grant, a licensed childcare provider and operator of Tiny Tikes Daycare in Trenton, Maine, sued Maine DHHS and several employees after she publicly criticized DHHS before Maine’s Government Oversight Committee and alleged that officials retaliated against her.

She claimed DHHS imposed and extended a conditional license, published stigmatizing information, interfered with subsidies and program funding, removed her from a food program, rescinded an expansion grant, and used biased or falsified evidence in licensing proceedings. Following the March 10, 2023, GOC testimony, Ms. Grant alleges that foster children's subsidies (approximately $30,000) were withheld; she was removed from the ...

post photo preview
August 05, 2026
It Doesn’t Pay to Lie in an Application for Insurance

Rescission for Material Misrepresentation
Post 5418

Posted on August 5, 2026 by Barry Zalma

An Insurer May Rescind An Insurance Policy Where The Applicant Made A Material Misrepresentation In The Application.

In Union Mutual Fire Insurance Company v. 844 Knickerbocker, LLC, et al. No. 2024-10359, Index No. 602824/22, 2026 NY Slip Op 04789, Supreme Court of New York, Second Department (July 29, 2026) Union Mutual Fire Insurance Company issued commercial insurance policies to 844 Knickerbocker, LLC, and Sanjaya Mallick based on applications stating that the insured property contained two apartment units. After an underlying personal injury action was filed, Union Mutual determined that the property actually contained three apartment units and rescinded the policies on the ground that the defendants had made a material misrepresentation in the applications.
LAW:

A misrepresentation is material if the insurer would not have issued the same policy, or would have issued it only on different terms, had the true ...

post photo preview
August 05, 2026
It Doesn’t Pay to Lie in an Application for Insurance

Rescission for Material Misrepresentation
Post 5418

Posted on August 5, 2026 by Barry Zalma

An Insurer May Rescind An Insurance Policy Where The Applicant Made A Material Misrepresentation In The Application.

In Union Mutual Fire Insurance Company v. 844 Knickerbocker, LLC, et al. No. 2024-10359, Index No. 602824/22, 2026 NY Slip Op 04789, Supreme Court of New York, Second Department (July 29, 2026) Union Mutual Fire Insurance Company issued commercial insurance policies to 844 Knickerbocker, LLC, and Sanjaya Mallick based on applications stating that the insured property contained two apartment units.

LAW:

A misrepresentation is material if the insurer would not have issued the same policy, or would have issued it only on different terms, had the true facts been disclosed. To establish materiality as a matter of law, the insurer must submit documentation of its underwriting practices, such as manuals, guidelines, bulletins, or rules addressing similar risks.

DISCUSSION/ANALYSIS:

As a result, the...

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