Crime and Courts

NY Woman Admits to Scheming Insurance Company Out of $200K Worth of iPhones

Apple iPhone
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A New York City woman admitted to scheming over $200,000 worth of iPhones from an insurance company, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The U.S. Attorney District of New Jersey said Rosanna Lucrecia Cruel Blanco of the Bronx pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud after prosecutors alleged that she and others used the identities of phone customers and filed false insurance claims to an unnamed company from December 2017 to January 2020.

According to court documents, the 39-year-old fraudulently obtained replacement cellphones from the insurance program. Most of the phones were from Apple, each valuing around $700 to $1,000.

Blanco and co-conspirators were accused of contacting the phone company as real customers and submitted false claims of damage, theft, or loss on hundreds of phones. They had the company ship the phones to different locations including addresses in the Bronx, Yonkers, White Plains, Manhattan, and other areas in New Jersey.

More than 100 replacement phones were sent to the fraudsters, totalling more than $200,000, prosecutors said.

Blanco is set to be sentenced in October. She faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the monetary damage from the fraud.

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