Credit: Bucks County District Attorney’s Office
A 60-year-old Falls Township woman was criminally charged Friday with filing false insurance claims.
Cynthia Clarey of Fairless Hills allegedly filed more than $130,000 claims to Allstate Insurance over the course of two years. She said, according to court papers filed by Bucks County Detectives, that both she and her husband were undergoing expensive treatments for cancer.
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Detectives Timothy Perkins and Eric Landamia began investigating Clarey in early August after receiving information from Allstate Benefits, which was doing business as American Heritage Life Insurance Company. The company became suspicious that Clarey was fleecing them.
In 2011, Clarey took out a cancer policy for her and her husband, who was not charged with any crime on Friday.
The first claim on the policy was filed in February 2013 by Clarey. She stated her husband had prostate cancer and was undergoing treatment, according to court papers.
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Various claims were paid out to Clarey until Allstate stopped in June 2014.
At that time, the insurance company request medical records from the hospital to continue making payments. They never received consent to obtain the records and no protest from Clarey when they stopped paying for her husband’s alleged treatments.
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Just a month after Allstate stopped paying for Clarey husband’s alleged treatments, she filed a claim stating she was diagnosed with cancer, authorities said.
Several claims were filed along with forged paperwork over the following months, detectives said.
An insurance claims examiner investigated the filings with Middletown and Yardley medical practices that Clarey stated she was receiving treatment from.
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“Both medical providers indicated that the documents pertaining to their respective practices were not created by them, and that no such treatments occurred at their respective facilities,” according to court papers.
“Your Affiants reviewed the submissions received by Allstate from Cynthia Clarey regarding the alleged treatments received by both she and her husband. The words ‘receipts’ and ‘adjustments’ are misspelled on several documents as ‘receits’ and ‘adjustents,’ respectively. Other documents were found to have P.O. boxes, zip codes and telephone numbers assigned to medical providers that were incorrect,” detectives wrote.
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The investigation uncovered that Clarey was paid $134,990 for claims she filed from February 2013 to December 2014, court papers stated.
Over the course of the alleged fraud, Clarey reportedly submitted 462 claims totaling $503,213.
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Clarey admitted during an interview with detectives last month that “she submitted these false claims in order to obtain money to pay bills, as she claimed to be suffering from financial hardship due to her husband’s medical bills and other expenses,” according to court papers. It was not immediately clear what condition prompted Clarey’s husband to have mounting medical bills.
She also allegedly added she never had cancer and her husband was never treated for cancer.
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Clarey was arraigned Friday morning by District Judge Jan Vislosky on charges of fraud, theft by deception, forgery and identity theft. She was released on $100,000 unsecured bail.
A press release from the district attorney said the investigation was funded by a grant, overseen by Assistant District Attorney Gregg Shore, from the Pennsylvania Insurance Fraud Prevention Authority.
Editor’s Note: All individuals arrested or charged with a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The story was compiled using information from police and public court documents.
