Pa collision owner sentenced for faking insurance claims

On Monday, July 10, John Paul Reis, 56, of Newtown Township, owner of Chalfont Collision Center, was sentenced to 84 months of restrictive probation. Reis will be confined to home for the first four months. He'll have to wear an electronic monitor to make sure he remains at home.

Reis was also ordered to repay more than $435,000 to five insurance companies that he defrauded by submitting nearly 300 fake insurance claims over eight years.

Reis was charged in August of 2022 with insurance fraud, deceptive business practices, forgery and theft by deception. All charges were third-degree felonies.

In March, Reis entered an open guilty plea to the charges. In that type of plea, defendants plead guilty and agree to accept a sentence decided solely by the judge. The plea is often entered when prosecutors argue for a tough sentence that the defendant thinks is too harsh.

The charges came after a four-year investigation by the district attorney office's fraud unit that began in September of 2018. An insurance company told the office that the collision center was "enhancing and/or creating damage" to customers' cars to inflate insurance estimates.**BULLSEYE

Investigators said the Reis would wipe a mixture onto the bodies of vehicles to damage them. They said Reis would also strike some vehicles with a hammer to make them look like they had been in an accident.

Investigators said that because Chalfont Collision Center was a direct repair center for Erie Insurance and other insurers, it was given authorization to write estimates, complete repairs and submit estimates and bills. That sped up the repair process for customers, but it also made it easier to falsify claims.

The investigation concluded that as part of the fraud, Reis sent 189 claims to Liberty Mutual Insurance totaling more than $312,000.**STANDARD

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