For Immediate Release
June 4, 2009

Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg announced that the Travis County Grand Jury indicted three individuals on insurance related cases..

Ronald Spain and Janice Acevedo were indicted on Tuesday on four counts of Unauthorized Insurance, a third degree felony. Their company, HR Trust Services, L.L.C., was located in Austin and through this company, Spain and Acevedo purported to provide health insurance benefits to realtors throughout Texas and in other states. Neither Spain nor Acevedo had an insurance license and HR Trust did not have a certificate of authority to operate in Texas, as required by law. As a result of their actions, Texas consumers were left with unpaid insurance claims totaling more than $712,000.

In a separate case, Gary Garza of Corpus Christi was indicted on Tuesday on ten counts of Tampering with a Governmental Record, a second degree felony. Garza inspected buildings and submitted documents containing false information to obtain certificates of compliance from the Texas Department of Insurance. These certificates are required before the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association will issue a windstorm policy and the certificates obtained by Garza were used to purchase windstorm insurance policies for ten properties. The submissions Garza provided to the Department of Insurance for these properties had the seal of a professional engineer affixed to them, but Garza was neither a professional engineer nor did he have permission to use the seal he used.

The cases are being handled by the Insurance Fraud Section of the District Attorney’s Public Integrity Unit and were initially investigated by the Texas Department of Insurance.

Third degree felonies are punishable by up to 10 years in prison and second degree felonies are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

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