The World Was His Stage
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has affirmed the convictions of an attorney on insurance fraud charges .
[Attorney] Hyde’s convictions resulted from insurance claims submitted on behalf of clients purporting to have been injured in two staged automobile accidents — one alleged to have occurred on October 1, 2002, and the other alleged to have occurred on December 20, 2002. Hyde’s primary contention on appeal is that the Commonwealth failed to establish at both the grand jury and petit jury stages of the case that he knew that these particular accidents were staged. On this ground, he maintains that both his pretrial motion to dismiss the indictments and his motion for required findings of not guilty at trial should have been allowed. In addition, Hyde argues that the indictments should have been dismissed for the additional reason that the integrity of the grand jury proceedings was impaired, and that he is entitled to a new trial as a result of the erroneous admission of prior bad act evidence.
The attorney not not originate the scheme but appears to have jumped in with enthusiasm.
On December 5, 2000, Lopez staged his first accident. He drove his own car, which he was eager to replace, and arranged for a woman to hit it with her minivan. The next day, he went to Kaplan for treatment. At Kaplan’s recommendation, Lopez promptly went to see Hyde at his law firm. At that meeting, Hyde explained that Lopez would need to accumulate $2,000 in medical bills to have a case, and gave him an envelope containing a check for $200 for bringing the matter to the firm. Hyde also promised to “take care of [him]” if he referred more clients.
Lopez and the attorney found the relationship mutually beneficial
As Lopez became friendly with Hyde, the two had a number of private conversations where Hyde made specific suggestions about how best to stage the accidents. For example, Hyde told Lopez that there were three insurance companies to be avoided, because they were “really going hard investigating the accidents.” On four or five occasions, Hyde told Lopez to keep the number of people in a vehicle to no more than three. Ortega testified to similar conversations with Hyde in which Hyde explained that too many passengers “would bring up red flags” with the insurance companies. On the other hand, Lopez also understood from discussions with Kaplan, that if there were too few passengers, there would not be enough money. Sometimes Hyde would tell Lopez that he should “coach” a nervous client “better,” in case the insurance company sent out an investigator to ask the client questions. Hyde explained that if the client gave a statement that was inconsistent with the accident report, it would raise suspicions, and no one would get paid.
The court rejected claims that the evidence was insufficient to convict and that the evidence of other staged accidents was prejudicial.
Hyde has demonstrated no abuse of discretion in admitting evidence of these staged accidents, which was necessary to establish important background facts about the scheme, including the origin of concerns about the number of people in a vehicle and Lopez’s transition to staging paper accidents.
Mass.gov reported on the crimes . (Mike Frisch)