LOS ANGELES – Tonja Van Roy, 59, of Las Vegas, formerly of Northridge, is headed to federal prison after a brazen scheme to defraud a lender out of $3.7 million. Van Roy, a veteran insurance agent, was sentenced today to 50 months behind bars for fabricating insurance policies for art collections and siphoning the loan money for personal use.
U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson handed down the sentence, also ordering Van Roy to pay $1,880,237 in restitution. The 59-year-old pleaded guilty on January 6 to one count of wire fraud, admitting to a years-long operation built on lies and forged documents. The case exposes the vulnerability of premium financing even to seasoned financial institutions.
Court documents detail how Van Roy, operating Pegasus Insurance in Northridge from January 2021 to December 2023, crafted dozens of bogus finance agreements with AFCO Credit Corp., a Lake Forest, Illinois-based provider. These agreements were supposedly for insurance policies covering art galleries – policies that never existed. Van Roy didn’t just invent the policies; she fabricated the policy numbers and digitally forged the signatures of fictitious insureds, a calculated effort to appear legitimate.
The money wasn’t used to protect priceless artwork; it lined Van Roy’s pockets. Prosecutors revealed in a sentencing memorandum that the funds were used to fuel a lavish lifestyle, covering payments on “dozens of credit cards.” When the initial loans from AFCO came due, Van Roy doubled down, submitting more fraudulent agreements and using the proceeds from the new loans to cover the old ones – a classic Ponzi scheme masked as insurance financing. She leveraged over 25 years of experience in the insurance industry to pull off the elaborate deception.
“[Van Roy] embarked on a sophisticated, multiyear scheme to borrow fraudulently over $3.7 million dollars using her insider’s knowledge of the insurance industry,” prosecutors argued. “She had an expert’s understanding of the industry, which allowed her to manipulate her victims and avoid detection for years.” The investigation, led by Homeland Security Investigations and the California Department of Insurance, finally brought Van Roy’s scheme crashing down.
Assistant United States Attorney Andrew Brown of the Major Frauds Section successfully prosecuted the case, securing a significant sentence for Van Roy. This case serves as a stark reminder that even those with specialized knowledge can fall prey to greed, and that federal authorities are actively pursuing and prosecuting complex financial crimes. The art world, and the insurance industry that supports it, should take note.
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Key Facts
- State: California
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: White Collar Crime
- Source: Official Source ↗
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