Clifton man sentenced for $1.5M insurance fraud

By PETER J. SAMPSON

A Clifton man was sentenced Wednesday to nearly four years in prison for engineering a $1.5 million insurance fraud involving claims for damage to New Jersey Turnpike Authority property caused by motorists.

U.S. District Judge Kevin McNulty sentenced Gerardo A. Blasi, 56, to 45 months in prison and fined him $5,000 during a hearing in federal court in Newark.

Blasi, a claims manager who left the turnpike agency in mid-2013 after 34 years, pleaded guilty late last year to a single count of mail fraud. He admitted that he carried out the scheme with help from executives at two claims adjusting companies who got a cut of the $1.5 million in illicit proceeds.

As a claims manager, Blasi negotiated and collected payments from insurance companies whose insured drivers were involved in crashes that damaged turnpike property. Beginning in May 2009, Blasi hatched a scheme to defraud the authority and certain insurance firms by enlisting a claims adjusting firm in Saddle Brook to prepare inflated repair estimates and submit the bogus claims to the motorist’s insurer.

Once a settlement was reached, the insurer would mail a check for the inflated sum to the adjuster, who then cut a check for a smaller amount to the Turnpike Authority and split the difference with Blasi, prosecutors said.

Blasi admitted that he engaged in a similar scheme with the president of a second adjusting firm between October 20l1 and June 2013.

After the agency changed its policy and decided it would no longer pursue damage claims in cases involving fatalities, Blasi continued to secretly file claims for property damage caused by motorists who had died in accidents. When those insurance checks arrived, they were deposited in the adjuster’s bank account and the full amount was divided between them, prosecutors said.

In seeking leniency, Nutley defense attorney Anthony J. Iacullo said Blasi had been an exemplary employee for most of his years with the agency, but that changed after he got addicted to pain killers and then resorted to heroin when his prescriptions ran out.

Iacullo said Blasi led two separate lives, one before and the other after he got addicted to drugs. It was not greed for money that drove Blasi to crime, but the need to feed a decade-long addiction, the lawyer said.

In June, Saddle Brook insurance adjuster Mark Valentino pleaded guilty of mail fraud and admitted scheming with Blasi to share payouts from turnpike accidents. Valentino, owner of a local franchise for Frontier Adjusters, was sentenced Wednesday to 28 months in prison and a $4,000 fine.

The third defendant, Robert Napolitano, 54, of Clifton, pleaded guilty in September to stealing at least $900,000 with Blasi. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 8.

Source: NorthJersey.com