In Tampa, auto insurance fraud is lucrative — until it's caught
Dr. Alex Petro claimed to be disabled because of a car accident in Hillsborough County. So disabled, he told insurers, that he couldn't even cut his grass or take out the garbage. He collected more than $300,000 in disability payments.
But when Petro was arrested on prescription drug charges, Pinellas sheriff's deputies took a closer look at the chiropractor's background. They noticed something the original accident investigator hadn't: The driver of the beer truck that hit Petro's Cadillac lived at the same address in St. Petersburg as Petro.
That and other findings piqued the interest of an insurance company. It began monitoring the 46-year-old doctor to see if he was as disabled as he claimed.
In 2008 Petro was arrested again — this time on a felony charge of insurance fraud.
Petro is among the hundreds of people arrested in Florida in the past three years for what chief financial officer Jeff Atwater calls an epidemic. His is the kind of case that vexes investigators in a state that ranks No. 1 nationally in auto insurance fraud. Questionable claims and staged traffic accidents are estimated to have cost consumers nearly $1?billion.
And Tampa leads the state in staged wrecks, with 487 last year. Only Brooklyn had more.
Why Tampa?
Read more at the St. Petersburg Times.