Pair to Stand Trial in Oklahoma for Inflating Insurance Company Assets

Two Texas men accused of inflating assets in a scheme to dupe regulators regarding the solvency of their insurance company will stand trial in Oklahoma, state Attorney General Drew Edmondson announced. A trial date has not yet been determined.

Jimmy Warren Wolff and Rodney Alfred Williams, the controlling owners of Oklahoma-based Top Flight Insurance, will stand trial on one felony count of conspiracy against the state, nine felony counts of filing a false financial statement and one felony count of racketeering. The pair was charged in October 2007 by prosecutors from Edmondson’s Workers’ Compensation and Insurance Fraud Unit.

The state alleges Wolff and Williams regularly bolstered the Top Flight books by transferring money into the company’s account on days immediately preceding Top Flight’s annual and quarterly report deadlines at the Oklahoma Insurance Department. The next day, the money would be removed. The two are accused of filing these false reports on nine occasions between December 2002 and December 2004. In addition to their money transfer scheme, Williams and Wolff are accused of falsely reporting their real estate holdings to further prop up their financial standing with the insurance department.

“The defendants allegedly took in almost $4 million in customer premiums during the time they were engaged in these practices,” Edmondson said. “These customers were paying premiums for coverage that Williams and Wolff could not deliver. If a catastrophe had occurred, the company did not have the financial holdings to cover all the assets it insured.”

The insurance department shut the company down in 2005, Edmondson said. Williams and Wolff were charged after an investigation by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.

Source: Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, www.oag.state.ok.us