Insurance agent from Vernal gets jail for fraud

The former majority owner of Service Insurance of Vernal was escorted out of a Salt Lake City courtroom in handcuffs.

Philip J. Timothy was sentenced late last month to serve 11 prison terms of one to 15 years and four prison terms of zero to five years for 15 felonies related to his misuse of client funds and his efforts to cover up that misuse once a state investigation began.

But 3rd District Court Judge Judith S. Atherton suspended the consecutive prison sentences for Timothy, ordering him to spend six months in the Salt Lake County Jail instead.

Timothy, 57, will also be required to serve three years on supervised probation, be stripped of his insurance license, reimburse the state $104,000 for investigation costs, cooperate fully with an audit of his former company's books and leave $300,000 in a state-administered trust fund for one year to pay restitution to his victims.

Atherton, who characterized Timothy's conduct as "very planned, methodical stealing" and "pretty troubling behavior," denied a request by defense attorney Loni DeLand to allow Timothy to serve his time in the Uintah County Jail in Vernal.

DeLand had also asked Atherton to order his client to wear an electronic ankle monitor for one year rather than serve jail time, a sentence the defense attorney said would allow Timothy to continue to care for a 130-acre farm he had recently planted with alfalfa.

"That would essentially keep him and his family out of bankruptcy," DeLand told Atherton, noting that failure to harvest the alfalfa would result in an immediate loss of $50,000 to $60,000 for Timothy.

DeLand said he believed the Utah Attorney General's Office and the state insurance department had overstated the number of victims in the case, the number of dollars involved and the number of years Timothy was illegally using money he should have been keeping for or refunding to clients.

"When this is over, I don't believe there will be one penny lost by anyone," DeLand told the court.

Timothy pleaded guilty in April to one count each of racketeering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice; two counts each of filing a false or fraudulent insurance claim, forgery and communications fraud; and three counts each of unlawful dealing with property by a fiduciary and theft by deception.

According to state investigators, Timothy used insurance premium refunds owed to clients to buy two trailers and a $30,000 Harley-Davidson motorcycle. He also failed to return over $44,000 in premium refund monies to an oil-field service company after it canceled its policy and helped create fraudulent bonds worth more than $1.5 million for two construction companies, court records indicate.

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