Jeovane Felizardo, owner of JJF Construction Services, LLC, has been charged with workers' compensation fraud for allegedly using various local money service businesses to cash checks in an alleged attempt to illegally conceal his total payroll from his workers' compensation insurance provider to avoid higher premium costs.
Florida's chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronis, said in a statement that investigators discovered that Mr. Felizardo had provided false payroll totals to his workers' compensation provider and misrepresented his employee's class codes. According to prosecutors, Mr. Felizardo reported his total payroll to be $76,799 when signing up for his policy. Based on the declared payroll amount and the reported employee class codes, Mr. Felizardo's insurance company determined the premium for his workers' compensation policy to be $24,894, according to Mr. Patronis.
After further investigation by Florida's Bureau of Insurance Fraud, investigators reportedly found that Mr. Felizardo cashed a minimum of 540 checks from April 16, 2016 to April 16, 2017, all issued by contractors doing business with JJF Construction Services, totaling $5,929,534. The contractors confirmed that the checks issued were only to cover labor costs and not any associated material costs, prosecutors said.
As alleged, Mr. Felizardo's failure to accurately report payroll and class codes to his insurer resulted in a gross underpayment of insurance premiums. Had the actual amount of Mr. Felizardo's payroll and proper class codes been reported to his worker's compensation provider the resulting premium rate would have been $1,841,137, a difference of $1,816,243, according to the government.
Mr. Felizardo was charged with workers' compensation fraud and scheme to defraud.