Man's Years of Insurance Fraud Come Crashing to an End

By Brooke A. Masters
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday , July 8, 2000 ; B01

Corey Welker was a one-man wrecking crew.

The Springfield resident preyed on innocent Washington area motorists, personally causing 63 accidents solely for the purpose of collecting the insurance money.

He had favorite intersections where he would lie in wait for unsuspecting drivers, and he used the same battered clunkers again and again. He even had a preferred injury--he claimed pain in his left wrist after more than 20 separate collisions. In at least nine cases, Welker told police such convincing stories that the other driver--the real victim--received a ticket.

After each accident, Welker would file a claim for minor bodily injuries and minor car damage with his victim's insurance company, according to court records. Several companies were hit with half a dozen claims, but each claim was so small--usually less than $2,500--that they did not attract much notice. As a result, Welker was able to keep himself in drug money for nearly a decade.

But yesterday, the law finally caught up with him. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III sentenced Welker, 46, to three years in prison and ordered him to repay insurance companies $82,000.

"You stand convicted of a very serious crime, a felony crime," Ellis told Welker in federal court in Alexandria. "These accidents weren't just bogus. They were staged. They were dangerous. Police officers had to respond."

Welker, who has previous convictions for trespassing and setting fire to his home to file a false insurance claim, told the judge he chose to plead guilty to mail fraud--rather than fight the charges--because he wanted to turn his life around.

"I am disgusted with the actions I have taken," he said. "I've spent the last 10 years in and out of criminal conduct. I've failed in two marriages and several jobs. I've been incarcerated only to return to the same use of drugs. I want to change so I can do something I can be proud of in the future."

His victims agreed that his conduct has been shameful.

Welker followed Wendie Forde from Georgetown Pike in Fairfax County to Constitution Avenue in the District, eventually bumping into her Jaguar with his Ford Mustang. Her daughter, Kimberlie, began suffering back pain several days after the 1993 accident and eventually had spinal surgery. "I think he should have gotten longer for what he did," Forde, 41, said yesterday. "He could have killed someone."

And Michael G. DeLong, who was given a ticket for failure to yield after he and Welker collided on Shirlington Circle above Interstate 395 in Virginia in 1997, said of Welker's sentence, "I love it.

"That guy hit me and I knew it was staged. . . . But as far as the officer was concerned, it was a fender bender . . . and he was trying to clear the travel lanes," said DeLong, whose ticket was dismissed after Welker failed to show up in court.

DeLong was so suspicious of Welker that he went to Welker's home, took pictures of his 1979 Cadillac and told his insurance company, USAA, not to pay Welker's claim. USAA eventually matched DeLong's pictures with another Welker accident in their files involving the same car and the same injury, DeLong said.

USAA tipped off the FBI, Supervisory Special Agent Rick Germroth said.

FBI officials said Welker used that Cadillac in 10 accidents and crashed a 1973 Buick Century in 13 others. More than 40 of the accidents occurred at the same five intersections, and he would sometimes lay in wait for an hour or two before gunning his car into another vehicle. Police were called to at least 17 of the accident scenes, according to the investigation by Special Agent Robert Werner.

Prosecutors argued that Welker's sentence should be bumped from about two years to three because the many collisions interfered with police and court business. "If the police are preoccupied with staged accidents, they can't do their job patrolling the highway," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Learned.

Ellis agreed that Welker should receive a significant prison term so he can be treated for drug addiction. "You write the pages of your own life," he told Welker. "You can either continue writing the same story, at which point you'll be in jail, or you can make a fundamental change."

Although the FBI has broken up six other auto insurance fraud rings locally, officials said Welker's case was particularly disturbing because he crashed into unsuspecting drivers rather than working with accomplices to stage accidents.

"Some people actually got hurt," Germroth said. "These highways are dangerous enough without throwing the criminal element into the mix."

© 2000 The Washington Post Company
 

RANDY KENNEDY, NY TIMES -

In five days, when the last New York City subway token slides through the slot of the last booth to sell them, few people will notice and fewer will care. . . But off in a corner, hidden in the shadows where things begin to smell bad, at least a few observers will notice and care quite a lot. They belong to a sad and desperate breed of criminal that has been in decline for a long time, one that will soon become as irrelevant as bootleggers and horse thieves. Officially, the crime is classified as theft of Transit Authority property. But among transit police officers it is more accurately and less delicately known as token sucking. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it is exactly what it sounds like.

The criminal carefully jams the token slot with a matchbook or a gum wrapper and waits for a would-be rider to plunk a token down. The token plunker bangs against the locked turnstile and walks away in frustration. Then from the shadows, the token sucker appears like a vampire, quickly sealing his lips over the token slot, inhaling powerfully and producing his prize: a $1.50 token, hard earned and obviously badly needed.

Even among officers who had seen it all, it was widely considered the most disgusting nonviolent crime ever to visit the subway. "It gave you the willies," said Brendan J. McGarry, a veteran transit police officer. "We've had cases every so often, these guys would end up choking and swallowing the tokens. Then what do you do? You've got to wait for the evidence to come out?"

In truth, most token suckers usually had enough evidence already in their pockets to warrant locking them up - some of the most dedicated were able to extract more than $50 worth of tokens a day. And deterrence, when dealing with someone willing to clamp his mouth to one of the most public surfaces in all of New York City, was next to impossible. "These guys were on their last legs," Officer McGarry said. "If they were going to jail, it was just an inconvenience for them."

http://www.mathiasen.com/?page=journal&sub_page=archive&display=0000002895

ASSOCIATED PRESS, PORT ROYAL, VA -

He left $100 bills in his wake and, when this bank robber reached his getaway car, he found the keys had been locked inside. It didn't get any better for the masked man who entered the Union Bank & Trust in Caroline County. After he fled his
locked car on foot, the frustrated suspect was run down by two civilians and inadvertently shot himself in the leg. When he continued to struggle, one of the citizens shot him in the leg, too. . . Caroline County Sheriff Homer Johnson said Edward Butler Blaine, 61, of Spotsylvania County, was eventually charged with eight felonies, including robbery and two counts of attempted murder.

http://wtop.com/index.php?nid=25&sid=37080

CHECKED BAGGAGE

[From an account of airport baggage handlers in Miami]

MIAMI NEW TIMES -

In the rapidly rising morning heat, Marvin and Lazaro position the suitcases, trunks, boxes, animal cages, and all the other cargo in the holds. But before they do, they've already appraised their potential yield. Marvin is an acknowledged master of trinket heist. He can spot a suitcase that looks full of loot (he relies mostly on hunches, as a good Customs agent does when deciding whether to search a traveler for contraband), open the bag (locks pose no deterrent), and in a matter of seconds pocket a gold bracelet and earrings, a few packs of cigarettes, and a bottle of expensive perfume. He'll set aside a video camera and a T-shirt he fancies. Later, if the coast is clear, he can spirit these bulkier items down the ramp, into a transport vehicle, and at the terminal into a secure hiding place like a tote bag, eventually an office locker or a car. Marvin will probably give Filberto a pack of cigarettes. He'll keep the jewelry for Barbara or sell it and the camera to one of his many airport acquaintances. He will be sure to slip the perfume (or perhaps a later find) to his supervisor -- "For your wife, compadre" -- in a subtle kickback gesture the ramperos call mojandolo, literally, "getting him wet." The routine is repeated in infinite variations depending on conditions during his shifts. It's not as easy as Marvin makes it sound, considering the hours of heavy lifting under sun or rain, usually without adequate manpower and always with intense pressure to do more, faster, to save those dollars on that underbid contract.

"Of course you never know what you'll find," Marvin explains later, his elbows tipping a tiny dining table back and forth in a cramped corner of his kitchen. He and Barbara both receive food stamps, and Barbara is cooking picadillo and tostones. "It's best to get on the airlines the rich people use, like Lufthansa," Marvin advises. "Poor people use Lauda [another German airline]. Some bags come with locks as big as this table, but they're worthless. A lot of guys carry lock cutters, but you have to hide it under your shirt so no one can see it. Anyway, you usually don't need one. It's really easy to stick a pen into the zipper, unzip the bag, and zip it back up, and no one can tell it was opened." A playful expression momentarily animates Marvin's dark, impassive face, and he smiles guardedly. He slips a cigarette from the pack of Broncos lying on the table, lights it, takes a slow drag. "Sometimes you'll be fortunate enough to get an open bag, or one that's been torn during the flight. You have to fill out a form to report the damage to the airline, but you can take things out [of the suitcase] before you hand over the bag."

There are a lot more schemes Marvin and other ramperos have pulled He'll be glad to explain them over a few Heinekens, and he's not one of those people who claim they're coerced into stealing by sub-poverty wages and barely human working conditions. But he won't deny it helps him get by, just a little. "Life is hard." He shrugs. "Hay que saber vivir. You have to know how to live."

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2002-05-30/feature.html/1/index.html