Fast, Furious… and Fake

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by StaffReportTR , November 22, 2016

Incident centers around this 1955 Porsche 356 Speedster

What prompts someone to devise what appears to be a cleverly concocted scheme in order to defraud an insurance company out of hundreds of thousands of dollars?  Surely greed is a motivating factor.

However, the desire for unlawfully gotten cash often blinds the perpetrator from the flaws in his supposedly logical plan.

Such was the case for 54-year-old Constantine Petros of Petaluma and 60-year-old Christopher Hatton of Tahoma.  The pair were charged with multiple counts of insurance fraud and conspiracy in an insurance fraud incident that recently came to light.

Their ruse revolved around a 1955 Porsche 356 Speedster that Hatton claimed had been stolen while he was in Nevada.

Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones noted that “Petros and Hatton went to great lengths to weave an elaborate scheme in an attempt to defraud Farmer’s insurance out of $250,000.”

Here’s the twist — Hatton filed the false insurance claim for a car he never owned and was, in fact, never stolen. The two filed fake paperwork and forged VIN numbers in an effort to falsely claim that a Porsche 356 Speedster was stolen, in order to obtain an insurance claim of $250,000.

Ultimately, they didn’t pull it off.  If convicted, Petros and Hatton face up to five years in prison.