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Ex-Maryland officers plead guilty after staging car thefts to get insurance payouts
PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, Md. () — Two former Maryland officers recently pleaded guilty to federal charges relating to a years-long insurance fraud scheme.
The U.S. Attorney's Office (USAO) said former Prince George's County Police Department (PGPD) officer 36-year-old Michael Anthony Owen, Jr. and former Anne Arundel County Police Department (AACPD) officer 31-year-old Jaron Earl Taylor admitted to being involved in a conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Between August 2018 and February 2020, Owen and Taylor worked with fellow police officers, Candace Tyler, Conrad D'Haiti and Davion Percy, among others, the USAO detailed.
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Members would report losses to auto insurers to obtain money or avoid paying off vehicles that were less than the amount owed to them, using their status as police officers to bolster each other's claims by writing fake police reports.
Then, they submitted the police reports to insurers to validate the claim.
In August 2018, the USAO said Owen and Taylor staged the theft of Taylor's Chevrolet Tahoe.
After Taylor filed a fraudulent police report, reporting it as stolen, the two stripped the vehicle and drove it deep into the woods of a Maryland State Highway property near Largo.
Once he filed a claim, the U.S. Automobile Association (USAA) paid Taylor more than $38,000 for the loss.
Then, in January 2020, Owen reportedly helped D'Haiti avoid paying his loan balance on a Jaguar XKR. Working with him and Percy, Owen schemed to fake the car's theft.
On Jan. 4 of that year, D'Haiti parked his car behind the Marlow Heights Shopping Center, where Percy worked as police chief.
He paid Percy $350 to arrange for someone to tow the vehicle and 'extensively vandalize it for the purpose of creating a total insurance loss,' the USAO detailed.
Tyler then filed a fake police report and D'Haiti filed a claim with Liberty Mutual Insurance.
D'Haiti was paid $17,585 on the false claim.
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Also that month, Owen and Taylor helped a co-conspirator dispose of an Infiniti sedan so that they didn't have to make further payments on the vehicle while on duty overseas.
The conspirator gave Taylor $1,000 to stage the theft.
Taylor then forwarded the money to Owen, who filed another fake police report with PGPD, claiming the vehicle was stolen. In reality, the car had been moved to the top floor of an apartment complex's parking garage, replacing the car's license plates with ones from another vehicle.
The stolen car claim the conspirators filed with GEICO was denied, however, on the grounds of fraud.
Owen and Taylor pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, for which Owen faces up to 20 years in prison and Taylor faces up to three years.
Their sentences are both scheduled for Sept. 23.
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