2 Pennsylvania Insurance Agents Arrested For Fraud

Aug. 23--The state attorney general's office this week charged two local agents with insurance fraud.

Travis Wayne Wingrove, 29, of Dunbar, allegedly took $26,247 from clients between April 2013 and April 2015 while he worked at Rosemary Skaggs' State Farm Insurance Agency in East Huntingdon, according to a news release.

Jeffrey Lee Ingram, 53, of McCandless,, Allegheny County, allegedly submitted 252 fake Medicare claims and pocketed $88,636 between March and October 2016 while employed as an agent with Success Financial Solutions in Green Tree.

Both are free on unsecured bonds and face theft, identity theft, insurance fraud and related charges.

"Insurance fraud hurts consumers across our Commonwealth and causes premiums to rise for law-abiding policyholders," Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a news release. "In these cases, clients trusted agents to handle their policies and they betrayed that trust. We'll prosecute anyone who breaks the law by stealing from clients or submitting phony insurance policies for their own profit."

Agents said they were tipped off by the Pennsylvania Insurance Department about Wingrove, who allegedly used various schemes to take clients' money. Investigators said he stole money from life insurance policies, never deposited automobile insurance premiums and stole a loan that a client had taken out on a life insurance policy.

Several of Wingrove's purported victims were older than 70, police said.

Attorney Jeremy Davis said he plans to go through the preliminary hearing process before deciding what course the case may take.

Ingram's alleged scheme was uncovered by Medico insurance Company, which learned that purported customers never applied for policies, were dead or weren't qualified. Investigators said in a news release that Ingram submitted fake applications for Medicare supplement insurance and receive commissions from the company. He either used fictitious personal information to fill out the police documents or obtained names and other details from phone books, according to the release.

Ingram's attorney could not immediately be reached.

Both suspects have Sept. 6 preliminary hearings.

Anyone who believes they may have been a victim of insurance fraud can contact the attorney general's office at 717-787-0272 or scam@attorneygeneral.gov.

Renatta Signorini is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach her at 724-837-5374, rsignorini@tribweb.com or via Twitter @byrenatta.

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