A 63-year-old Gwinnett County man was sentenced to four years in federal prison for selling bogus cargo insurance policies to trucking companies nationwide, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday.
John Kill of Norcross, the former operator of Appeal Insurance Agency LLC, illegally collected more than $3.7 million from almost 800 trucking companies, authorities said.
He falsely represented to clients that Lloyd’s of London would provide insurance coverage, but did not broker any agreement with Lloyd’s and kept the premium payments for himself, according to prosecutors. He attempted to pay claims out of the payments he received from new victims.
“The defendant held himself out as an honest broker to hundreds of trucking companies, but he simply pocketed their premium payments instead of securing legitimate insurance coverage,” U.S. Attorney John Horn said in a news release. “His scam tricked clients into believing they had proper insurance coverage and endangered small businesses operating in more than 20 states.”
Companies in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia were affected from 2013 through mid-2014, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Kill was arrested at his home in July 2014 and pleaded guilty in May.
His four-year prison sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, and he must pay approximately $1.23 million in restitution to victims, authorities said.
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