A former Florida Department of Financial Services employee was arrested on a host of fraud-related charges after allegedly fleecing the agency over several years of more than $1.7 million.
Briana McCarthy, 35, of Tallahassee, was arrested Jan. 27 on charges that include aggravated white collar crime against a state agency, grand theft, money laundering, solicitation and conspiracy, official misconduct and forgery.
She was taken to the Leon County Detention Facility and later released on a $10,000 bond. The case was investigated by the agency’s Office of Fiscal Integrity under the Division of Criminal Investigations.
The Department of Financial Services is led by the state’s Chief Financial Officer, which is now Blaise Ingoglia. The alleged crimes happened under former CFO Jimmy Patronis, now a congressman for the state’s western Panhandle.
A DFS spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email asking whether more arrests are pending and how the scheme was able to continue for years undetected.
Fraud involved fake damage claims, investigators say
According to the probable cause affidavit, McCarthy began approving fraudulent claims submitted to the Florida Department of Transportation by drivers alleging their vehicles had been damaged on state roadways. The purported scam began in December 2021 and continued until she was fired in September 2024.
“In addition to intentionally approving fraudulent claims, she recruited individuals to participate in the scheme and altered or submitted fraudulent documents for them,” the 84-page report says. “(She) participated in the fraudulent approval of 224 property damage claims filed with DRM resulting in a payout of over $1.7 million.”
The money was given to payees from Thomasville, Georgia, to Miami, though most were from the Tallahassee area, including Quincy and Havana. All of the checks except one were for amounts under $10,000.
McCarthy began working for DFS in 2017 as a program specialist within the Division of Risk Management, which handled the DOT damage claims. She worked in the North and South Tort units, which are assigned claims by geographic location with adjusters from those parts of the state.
“Suspicious claim activity began in December of 2021 with three claims … paid outside of her unit area and to people believed to be personally known to her,” the arrest report says.
Report: Payments went to defendant’s boyfriend, others
The first suspicious payment went to a man believed to be a boyfriend of McCarthy, with more payments going to friends and family members, who allegedly split the proceeds between them. The arrest report mentioned several co-conspirators by name, though none of them appeared to have been arrested in connection with the state probe.
The investigation found that the claims were processed quickly and without some of the required department approvals.
“Out of the 224 suspicious claims, 206 of them were missing critical and/or required documents,” the report says.
“Seventy-eight of the claimants did not have a vehicle registered in the State of Florida at the date of the alleged incident. Forty-five of the claimants did not have a driver’s license or were not known to own a vehicle in the State of Florida at the date of the alleged incident.”
Nearly two dozen claims had altered vehicle registrations and another 19 had altered repair estimates. Some 16 claims reused the same vehicle registrations and damage estimates.
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Former state worker at DFS charged in $1.7M fraud scheme