The ex-cop has now been sentenced to for having taken part in this coverage fraud scandal.
A former police officer has now been sentenced in a case involving auto insurance fraud, requiring the participant in this scam to have to serve ten days of imprisonment on the weekends, in addition to three years of supervised probation.
This, according to a Western District of Oklahoma U.S. Attorney, Sanford C. Coats.
Beyond the imprisonment and supervised probation, the former officer, Clinton Ivan Rutledge, from Woodward, Oklahoma, is also being required to pay a sum of money in restitution to the auto insurance company that he scammed. Farmers Insurance Group will be receiving $21,163.63 in restitution from Rutledge, who will also have to complete 104 hours of community service.
Rutledge wasn’t the only person involved in this auto insurance scam which involved conspiracy to commit mail fraud.
According to the office of the U.S. Attorney, on October 10 of last year, Rutledge and another Woodward man named Christopher Dean Noreuil, were indicted by a federal grand jury. At that time, they were charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud. More precisely, it was alleged that in January of last year, Noreuil was asked by Rutledge to take Rutledge’s vehicle and hide it. The goal was to tuck the 2004 Ford F-250 pickup truck and a 1999 TexMex flatbed trailer in a place where it could not be found so that it will look as though both vehicles had been stolen.
Noreuil accepted and did hide the vehicles, after which point Rutledge made a theft report to the police and filed a fraudulent claim with his insurance company, Farmers Insurance Group. The insurer paid Rutledge over $21,000.
Rutledge is a former reserve deputy for the Woodward County Sheriff’s Office as well as a former officer from the Woodward Police Department. He pled guilty to knowingly conspiring with another person in order to commit mail fraud on October 20, 2013. Similarly, Noreuil pled guilty to the charges on November 19, 2013 although he continues to await his sentence.
This auto insurance fraud case was opened due to an inquiry that was held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Maxfield Green prosecuted this case.