Did Plymouth Woman Stage Ex-Husband's Death For The Life Insurance?
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - A Plymouth woman is accused of defrauding a life insurance company out of more than $2 million by staging the fake death of her ex-husband in a small eastern European village.
Irina Vorotinov, 48, appeared in a St. Paul District courtroom Tuesday, charged with mail fraud. Her 25-year-old son, Alkon, was also charged with actively concealing his mother's scheme.
The criminal complaint hinges on photos recovered from Alkon's computer that police say prove that his father was alive more than a year after his putative death.
"Fraud against insurance companies drives up the premiums paid by legitimate insureds," Assistant U.S. Attorney David J. MacLaughlin said in a statement. "Those who cheat insurance companies should expect to be investigated, prosecuted, and held accountable for the economic harm inflicted on those who deal honestly with the insurance industry."
In 2010, Vorotinov's ex-husband, Igor, named her and her son as beneficiaries on his $2.05 million life insurance policy with the Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company.
In 2011, on the first day of October, an anonymous phone call to police in the nation of Moldova pointed the way to a putrefied dead body lying between a pair of bushes outside the entrance of the Cojusna village.
On the body, police found a passport, hotel cards and contact phone numbers--all belonging to Igor Vorotinov.
Irina Vorotinov traveled to a Moldova morgue, where she identified the corpse as her ex-husband.
The body was cremated in Odessa, Ukraine, on Oct. 20.
Irina Vorotinov filed a claim with Mutual of Omaha on Nov. 7 and, four months later, the company sent a check for $2,048,414.09 to her home in Maple Grove. (Over a two-and-a-half year period, Irina and Alkon Vorotinov transferred more than $1.5 million of the life insurance money to accounts in Switzerland and Moldova, according to the criminal complaint.)
About two years later, Alkon Vorotinov's computer was seized by Detroit customs agents as he was returning from a trip to Moldova.
On the computer were digital photographs that, police say, show Igor Vorotinov about a year and a half after he was reported dead in Moldova.
The criminal complaint cites metadata on the photos that indicate they were taken on April 19, 2013, and May 12, 2013. The camera used to take the pictures was not released until nine months after Igor Vorotinov was declared dead. The photos were found in a computer file labeled "grandfather" in Russian.
The criminal complaint identifies the man in the photos as Igor Vorotinov by comparing the photos found on the computer to Vorotinov's driver's license photo. Also, an FBI agent on the case wrote in the complaint that she had met Igor Vorotinov during a previous investigation.
The criminal complaint offers no theories on Igor Vorotinov's current location or the true identity of the Moldovan corpse.
