According to Acting Insurance Fraud Prosecutor Chillemi, Jose D. Uribe, 44, of Union City, was sentenced to three years of probation by Superior Court Judge Paul M. DePascale. The amount of restitution that Uribe will be ordered to pay will be determined at a restitution hearing in February. The sentence was based on Uribe’s guilty plea to a criminal accusation which charged him with third-degree theft by deception.
On March 31, the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance revoked the insurance producer licenses of Uribe and his company and ordered him to pay $92,500 in fines.
At the May 23 guilty plea hearing, Uribe, a former insurance producer for the now-defunct Inter America Insurance Agency, LLC, admitted that between May 30, 2003 and Feb. 22, 2010, he obtained $76,819 in insurance premiums from seven clients by creating the false impression that he was remitting the monies to insurance carriers to secure commercial automobile insurance. In reality, he did not remit the premium payments to the insurance carriers.
Deputy Attorney General Nicole D. Rizzolo and Detective Earl Washington were assigned to the investigation. Rizzolo represented the state at the sentencing. Acting Insurance Fraud Prosecutor Chillemi thanked Detective Sgt. Mary Reinke and Assistant Prosecutor Michael Zevits of the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, Deputy Attorney General William Puskas of the Department of Law and Public Safety’s Division of Law, and Investigator Daxesh "Anil" Patel of the Department of Banking and Insurance for their assistance in the investigation.
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