TAMPA, Fla. – Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office prosecutors have filed six new felony fraud charges against Albert Adams, the former CEO of the nonprofit organization Soaring Paws.
In 2018, Hillsborough prosecutors convicted Adams of defrauding donors to his Soaring Paws charity after he used donations that were intended to help fly abused animals to new homes to instead pay for his own personal expenses.
The new charges come not from false charity work, but from pet insurance fraud. An investigation found that Adams signed up for a pet insurance policy, which would reimburse him for his pets’ medical expenses.
He proceeded to file claims and receive payment for nearly $13,000 worth of medical procedures that were never performed. The pet insurance provider discovered the deception and contacted law enforcement.
“People who support animals have big hearts, and when you scam them, we prosecutors have long memories. Fraud against pet donors, and now fraud against pet insurers. If you refuse to learn your lesson and come up with an honest way to make a living, we’re going to hold you accountable,” Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren said.
Investigators from the Florida Chief Financial Officer’s Office and prosecutors from the Hillsborough State Attorney’s Office collaborated on the investigation, which identified phony claims for five nonexistent procedures supposedly performed on two dogs belonging to Adams.
The resulting charges are one count of Organized Fraud Less Than $20,000 and five counts of False Statement in Support of an Insurance Claim Less Than $20,000. Each charge is a third-degree felony.
Before the truth was revealed, Adams received a total of $12,984.98 in ill-gotten payments from the pet insurance provider, Healthy Paws, between March 4 and April 8, 2020.
Adams was on probation from his Soaring Paws fraud conviction when he committed these new crimes. Accordingly, he also now faces penalties for Violation of Probation.
In addition, Florida law makes punishment harsher when probation is violated, so the potential sentence Adams faces for these new crimes may be made longer because of his many past crimes, including the Soaring Paws convictions plus other fraud-related convictions from the years before his Soaring Paws scams.