Suspected Auto Insurance Scammer Sentenced To Five Years For Kidnapping

April 26--A violent kidnapping stemming from an auto insurance scam earned a Westchester man five years in prison.

Yasmani Marquez, 24, was sentenced Tuesday and had been earlier convicted by jury of kidnapping a cohort in a dispute over a $20,000 claim in an insurance scam. The victim, acting in self-defense, shot and wounded Marquez after he had been held hostage for hours in May 2011.

Investigators say Marquez ran K&A Rehab Center in Westchester, which was being used to process bogus claims for staged accidents.

Through Florida's no-fault insurance law, personal injury protection payouts costs have skyrocketed in recent years, totally more than $2 billion since 2008, according to state statistics. The insurance industry says that many bogus claims cost average consumers by bumping up costs for coverage.

"Although he was not charged with insurance fraud, he is the primary example of how those committing insurance fraud, formerly a paperwork crimes, leads people to do violent crime," Miami-Dade prosecutor Ana Manrara told the judge.

A jury in March acquitted Marquez of the more serious charges of kidnapping and robbery, but convicted him of false imprisonment, a third-degree felony.

Fernandez, the judge, said he "had no doubt that there was a fraud involved in pervading this entire incident."

"It's very disturbing to me that you thought this was a good get-rich quick idea," Fernandez said.

According to state investigators, Marquez was in cahoots with four others who were later arrested for allegedly submitting $77,000 in bogus claims to four different clinics in Miami and Hialeah.

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