Woman could face up to eight years in prison for insurance fraud

Dec. 20--A woman could face up to eight years in prison for falsely claiming she was injured in a 2014 car accident involving her husband, according to the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office.

A jury on Thursday found Deborah Anne Carter guilty of three felony charges of insurance fraud in connection with an insurance claim that the couple had been injured in a minor crash.

The crash took place July 7, 2014, when a volunteer working for an alcohol and drug recovery facility for homeless people accidentally backed up the facility's minivan into a parked car. The crash, which happened at a slow speed, caused minor damage to both vehicles.

The Sacramento County District Attorney's Office said Carter's husband, Louis Hudson, was the only person in the parked sedan at the time of the accident. But Carter called her niece later that day and told her to call the facility's car insurer and report that both Carter and Hudson were in the parked sedan, according to the news release. Both told the insurance company that they had been injured.

The California Department of Insurance's Urban Auto Fraud Unit investigated the claim. Two witnesses said only Hudson was in the car at the time of the crash and that Carter had come out of a nearby building screaming afterward.

Hudson pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor auto insurance fraud charge at a separate court date and was sentenced to 90 days in jail with three years' probation.

Carter's sentencing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Jan. 13. She was convicted of a felony failure to appear by a different jury in a separate case, and the jury found she had committed a felony within five years of a prison term.

Nashelly Chavez: 916-321-1188, @nashellytweets

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