California’s state budget woes just got a bit of a boost from its State Department of Insurance.
Steve Poizner, the California State Commissioner of Insurance announced Friday that his office has successfully recovered nearly $113 million in 2009 from consumer claims of fraud and misconduct amongst the state’s insurance companies and independent agents successfully prosecuted for their crimes. Poizner claims this is the most money ever recovered by the office under any previous insurance commissioner. The state recovered about $62 million from health insurance companies, consumer fraud investigations and insurance brokerages in 2008.
Made up of two separate divisions, California’s Department of Insurance’s Consumer Services and Market Conduct branches recovered about a fourth of the money reportedly put back into the state’s coffers after closing wildfire-related insurance auditing cases that lingered from 2007 and 2008. The Market Conduct Division, which regulates health insurance companies alongside property and automobile insurers, recouped $23 million.
Poizner is in the midst of a heated race between former eBay executive Meg Whitman to replace current Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for the Republican nomination. Chuck DeVore, a relative unknown state assemblyman from Orange County is also running for the office. The heated race has led to claims that Poizner himself may have benefitted from his elected office. Among other accusations from his opponents, last month, the San Jose Mercury News and Associated Press reported that a relative of Poizner is accused of submitting inflated claims for auto insurance repairs and pocketing the difference.
