Commonwealth v. Lima (Lawyer Weekly No. 11-077-15)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557-1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us 13-P-1746 Appeals Court COMMONWEALTH vs. VIRGEN MILLIE LIMA. No. 13-P-1746. Suffolk. November 13, 2014. – July 22, 2015. Present: Cypher, Fecteau, & Massing, JJ. Motor Vehicle, Insurance. Insurance, Motor vehicle insurance, Defrauding insurer. Fraud. Larceny. False Pretenses. Practice, Criminal, Required finding. Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court Department on March 11, 2010. The cases were tried before Regina L. Quinlan, J. Charles Allan Hope for the defendant. Christopher Hurld, Assistant Attorney General, for the Commonwealth. CYPHER, J. The defendant, Virgen Millie Lima, appeals from convictions by a Superior Court jury of two counts of motor vehicle insurance fraud under G. L. c. 266, § 111B, and two counts of larceny under G. L. c. 266, § 30.[1] The defendant argues that there was insufficient evidence of intent to defraud and that she did not commit larceny by false pretenses, because there was no property stolen from Safety Insurance Company (Safety Insurance). We affirm. Background. The charges against the defendant arose from an investigation by the Massachusetts Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB), which was prompted by two referrals from Safety Insurance involving the same car dealership and the same insurance agency. The investigation began in 2008 while the defendant was employed as a licensed insurance agent by Brighton Insurance Agency in Brighton (Brighton Insurance). Following the IFB investigation, in which the investigator discovered a pattern of commercial vehicle policies involving undocumented drivers, a report of the findings was submitted to the office of the Attorney General. After review, that office sought indictments from a grand jury that charged the defendant with fraudulent statements or representations in three applications for commercial automobile insurance, prepared by the defendant and submitted by Brighton Insurance to Safety Insurance. The defendant also was charged with larceny in respect to those policies.[2] Facts. A significant portion of Brighton Insurance’s business involved serving a large influx of Brazilian immigrants, many of whom had Brazilian driver’s licenses. Brighton Insurance actively sought their business by advertising that it had staff fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, including the defendant. Similarly, many customers of an automobile agency, Inman Motors in Somerville, were Brazilian, and were referred to Brighton Insurance for their insurance needs. They were assisted in making that connection through the efforts of Wanderson Silva, one of Inman’s employees. Gordon Owades, the majority partner in Brighton Insurance, testified […]