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U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey this week sentenced former St. Louis Alderman Brandon Bosley to 16 months in prison for insurance fraud and lying to the FBI.

Bosley will be on supervised release for three years after his release from prison. Judge Autrey also ordered Bosley to pay restitution of $6,253.90 to the insurance company that he defrauded.

Bosley, 38, was found guilty by a jury in U.S. District Court in St. Louis in January of three felony wire fraud charges and one count of making a false statement to the FBI. Evidence and testimony at trial showed that after an auto accident, Bosley hatched a scheme to defraud an insurance company by falsely inflating the cost of needed repairs and then lied when FBI agents asked him about it.

In September of 2021, Bosley’s 2010 Toyota Prius, which was parked, was hit by another vehicle. The drivers’ insurance company contacted Bosley in February of 2022 and told him that they would pay for the damage. Bosley then asked the auto repair shop owner who had sold him the used Prius for the deeply discounted price of $500 to prepare and submit an inflated repair estimate in exchange for a bribe, evidence and testimony showed.

After the insurance company balked at a $6,800 repair estimate, Bosley caused a second estimate of $4,333 to be submitted, the trial showed. The insurance company ultimately totaled the car and paid Bosley $7,978.90. At the time, he had $14.93 in his bank account. He lived off the insurance proceeds for about six weeks.

When FBI agents interviewed Bosley in the presence of his lawyer in March of 2023, Bosley repeatedly lied, jurors found during the trial. He falsely stated to agents that he never saw the two fraudulent repair bills that were prepared. He falsely claimed the repair estimates were not inflated and denied asking the business owner to inflate the repair estimates.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith wrote in a sentencing memo that “this criminal scheme was instigated, planned, designed, and carried out by Defendant once he was advised by the insurance carrier that there was money to be had for repairs to the damaged Prius automobile.

From his very first conversation with the auto repair shop owner, without any idea of the extent of the necessary repairs, Defendant indicated that he wanted the Prius considered a total loss.”

Bosley “used his position as an elected official in discussions with representatives of the insurance company, presumably to influence their decision on his claim,” the memo says.

During the sentencing hearing, in requesting a sentence of imprisonment, Goldsmith advised the Court that, “the public is frustrated and fed up with these ticky-tacky fraud and bribery schemes committed by their elected officials,” “the public deserves some sense of justice here, and only a fair and just punishment will achieve that.”

The government’s sentencing memo also cites Missouri Ethics Commission findings from December that concluded that Bosley failed to report hundreds of improper expenditures for personal expenses, including gas, groceries and meals, made from two separate campaign accounts, at the time he was engaged in this insurance fraud. In recordings made by the business owner, Bosley also showed himself to be a racist and an antisemite, the memo adds.

“A federal jury unanimously agreed the evidence proved Brandon Bosley committed fraud. He initiated the scheme to bilk his auto insurance company. He directed the auto shop owner to inflate the cost to repair his car,” said Special Agent in Charge Chris Crocker of the FBI St. Louis Division. “In addition, Bosley used his position and made it clear to the insurance company that he is an elected official.”

The FBI investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Hal Goldsmith and Matthew Martin prosecuted the case.

Source: Eastern District of Missouri

Photo: Brandon Bosley, alderman in St. Louis’ 3rd ward, listens during a Board meeting at City Hall on Feb. 10, 2023 in St. Louis, Mo. The former alderman has been charged with lying to police about getting carjacked last year; the charge comes months after he was indicted by federal officials in a fraud and bribery investigation that put three other former St. Louis aldermen in prison last December. (Christian Gooden/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)

Topics Fraud