After the fire: Woman gets deferred sentence for insuring already-burned camper [The Montana Standard, Butte]

Apr. 13—A judge gave a Butte woman a one-year deferred sentence Thursday for obtaining insurance coverage for her camping trailer after it had already burned in a fire and receiving a payment of $8,000 for the loss.

Prosecutors said 33-year-old Jenna Marie Faroni called her insurance agent the day after the fire in November 2018 and filed a false insurance application that didn't disclose the camper was already scorched.

They charged her with two felony counts of criminal insurance fraud and in a pretrial agreement, she paid $6,372 in restitution to Farmers Insurance and pleaded guilty to one count. In exchange, prosecutors dropped the second count and recommended Faroni receive a deferred sentence.

Farmers got some money back from salvaging the trailer so restitution was less than the $8,000 paid out.

Faroni apologized for the crime Thursday and District Judge Kurt Kruger went along with the plea deal and also fined Faroni $1,000. She could have been sentenced up to 10 years in prison for each count and fined up to $50,000.

If Faroni stays law-abiding and meets other probation conditions for the next year, she can clear the incident from her record. Krueger said if she violates probation, he could sentence her to the maximum allowed.

In a memorandum to the judge, prosecutors said the offense "caused financial harm to her insurer, and insurance fraud inflates the premiums paid by all Montanans as a result.

"At the same time, the agreed sentence reflects the fact that the defendant had no prior criminal history, quickly admitted responsibility and paid restitution on her own initiative," the memorandum said.

According to prosecutors, Faroni and three others, including her boyfriend and her boyfriend's father, headed out for a hunting trip near Malta on Nov. 15, 2018 with Faroni's 2007 Jayco camping trailer in tow. She did not have active insurance on the trailer at the time.

After arriving at the campsite, a fire broke out behind the refrigerator in the camper. The parties pulled their belongings from the camper while others doused the fire with water bottles.

The boyfriend's father took videos and photos of the aftermath, prosecutors say, and posted them to Snapchat that day. They showed burned parts pulled from the camper and belongings and items strewn about on the grass outside the camper.

Faroni called her Farmers Insurance agent in Butte the next day and said she was just leaving town for a hunting trip and asked that insurance coverage be added to her camper, prosecutors say.

The company declared the trailer a total loss and paid out $8,000.

Agents with the Montana Auditor's Office and its division of Securities and Insurance investigated the case.

Mike Smith is a reporter at the Montana Standard with an emphasis on government and politics.

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