Former Insurance Broker Pleads Guilty

The California Department of Insurance announced that Mark Jerome Gentry, of Antioch, entered a guilty plea on June 23, 2005 to multiple counts of grand theft in the Contra Costa County Superior Court. Gentry was sentenced to three years state prison, ordered to pay restitution totaling more than $1.3 million, and taken into custody.

The guilty plea resulted from an extensive investigation conducted by CDI’s Investigation Division into the insurance business activities of Gentry and Contractors Bond Brokerage Inc., a specialized insurance producer in the San Francisco Bay Area. The investigation revealed that Gentry stole more than a million dollars of insurance premium and collateral paid by numerous construction firms.

Investigators found that beginning in 1997, Gentry began selling and issuing unauthorized performance bonds for which he collected over $200,000 in insurance premium payments. Gentry then failed to remit the premium to various insurance companies. He also issued fraudulent insurance documents to numerous consumers, assuring the consumers that they in fact had insurance coverage.

In 2001, Gentry’s appointments to sell insurance as an agent of a company were cancelled. Having no insurance market to place coverage with, Gentry began selling bogus insurance performance bonds. Gentry issued fraudulent certificates of insurance and collected and diverted to his personal use an additional $564,000 of insurance premium payments, and more than $541,000 of cash collateral.

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