BALTIMORE, MD—Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown this week announced that Laurelle Monet Manley-Williams, 34, of Glen Burnie, has been sentenced on one count of theft scheme, at least $25,000 but less than $100,000. The Honorable Charles Carey Deeley, Jr., a visiting judge in the Howard County Circuit Court, sentenced Manley-Williams to three years of incarceration, with all but 60 days suspended. Upon release, Manley-Williams will be on supervised probation for five years and be required to pay $35,405.23 in restitution to the victims.
In July 2018, Manley-Williams was hired as an insurance claims adjuster for the Agency Insurance Company (AIC). From late September 2018 through October 2018, Manley-Williams engaged in a scheme to defraud AIC by altering auto accident insurance claims she processed for the company. She added fraudulent passengers to the insurance claims when no passengers existed or for which the passengers were not involved in the auto accident. When AIC issued claim benefit checks for the fictitious passengers, Manley-Williams stole the checks and deposited them into her own bank account. In order to avoid detection, Manley-Williams later deleted the fictitious passengers from AIC’s records. She was able to steal $11,440.27 from AIC before she resigned in October 2018.
In November 2018, Manley-Williams began working as a claims adjuster for the Allstate Property and Casualty Insurance Company (Allstate). Almost immediately after starting with Allstate, Manley-Williams used the same scheme by adding fraudulent claimants to the auto accident claims she processed. She was able to steal a total of $23,964.96 from Allstate when the company issued checks and digital payments to the fictitious passengers.
All the stolen funds were deposited or transferred into bank accounts controlled or owned by Manley-Williams. Allstate discovered the scheme during an internal audit in February 2019. The total aggregate loss to AIC and Allstate was $35,405.23.
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