Former California Insurance Agent Sentenced for $3.7M Fine Art Policy Scam

A former California insurance agent was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison for defrauding a lender out of $3.7 million with bogus applications for fine art insurance policies.

Tonja Van Roy, 59, of Las Vegas, but who formerly operated a California-based insurance agency, reportedly obtained the applications for commercial clients, but instead using the money for herself.

VanRoy was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson, who also ordered her to pay $1.8 million in restitution. Van Roy pleaded guilty on January 6 to one count of wire fraud.

According to court documents, Van Roy owned Pegasus Insurance, a Northridge company that specialized in insurance policies covering art collections.

From January 2021 to December 2023, Van Roy created and submitted dozens of fraudulent finance agreements to AFCO Credit Corp., a Lake Forest, Illinois-based provider of insurance premium finance, to finance insurance policies she claimed to have sold to art galleries, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The office says Van Roy made up the insurance policy numbers she used and forged the electronic signatures for fictitious insureds, and she used the borrowed money to fund a lifestyle that included payments on dozens of credit cards.

When the loans came due, Van Roy submitted additional fraudulent finance agreements and used the proceeds from the new loans to make it appear as though the old loans had been repaid, according to the office.

Homeland Security Investigations and the California Department of Insurance investigated the matter. Assistant United States Attorney Andrew Brown of the Major Frauds Section prosecuted the case.

Topics California Agencies