Art of the steal: Las Vegas woman sentenced to 4 years, $1.8M fine for art insurance fraud

Jul. 7—A Las Vegas woman was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison for defrauding a lender out of $3.7 million by submitting fake applications for fine art insurance policies for clients and keeping the money for herself, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office news release.

Tonja Van Roy, 59, of Las Vegas, who formerly operated a California-based insurance agency, was sentenced by United States District Judge Stephen Wilson, who also ordered her to pay $1,880,237 in restitution.

Van Roy pleaded guilty on Jan. 6 to one count of wire fraud.

According to court documents, Van Roy owned and ran Pegasus Insurance which specialized in insurance policies covering art collections. From January 2021 to December 2023, Van Roy created and submitted dozens of fraudulent finance agreements to AFCO Credit Corp., a Lake Forest, Illinois-based provider of insurance premium finance, purportedly to finance insurance policies she claimed to have sold to art galleries.

Van Roy made up the insurance policy numbers she used and forged electronic signatures for fictitious clients. She used the borrowed money to fund her lifestyle, which included payments on dozens of credit cards. When the loans from AFCO came due, Van Roy submitted additional fraudulent finance agreements to AFCO, and used the proceeds from the new loans to make it appear as though the old loans had been repaid.

"[Van Roy] embarked on a sophisticated, multiyear scheme to borrow fraudulently over $3.7 million dollars using her insider's knowledge of the insurance industry," prosecutors argued in a sentencing memorandum. "[She] has more than 25 years of experience working as an insurance agent, during which time she sold countless insurance policies and worked for many different insurance agencies before founding her own; she had an expert's understanding of the industry, which allowed her to manipulate her victims and avoid detection for years."

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