Captive sues over alleged staged construction accidents in New York
- October 27, 2025
- Posted by: Web workers
- Category: Workers Comp
A captive insurer serving New York’s construction industry filed a civil racketeering complaint, alleging a widespread scheme to file phony workers compensation and personal injury claims to exploit the state’s Labor Law worker protections.
Captive Ionian Re LLC and contractors Skyline Restoration, Urban D.C. and DNA Contracting & Waterproofing allege a scheme that involved conspirators who recruited construction workers to stage fake accidents and then file fraudulent workers compensation and personal injury claims.
A handful of law firms allegedly referred the claimants to select medical providers who rendered unnecessary treatment and generated phony diagnoses to inflate the settlement value of claims, according to the complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for Eastern New York.
The claims typically involved unwitnessed falls and alleged numerous injuries to wrists, shoulders, knees, ankles, hips and necks, as well as mental injuries such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleeping difficulties, blurred vision, loss of enjoyment of life and mental anguish.
“Upon information and belief, this scheme involves hundreds of fraudulent claimants and has cost and continues to cost the people of New York state hundreds of millions of dollars in increased insurance premiums passed on to the state’s real estate owners/developers, construction managers, general contractors and subcontractors in the form of exorbitant increased premiums,” the complaint states.
Ionian filed a separate complaint in the same court in October, alleging a similar scheme that used Spanish-language safety training classes to recruit workers to stage construction accidents.
The latest complaint names as defendants three law firms — Subin & Associates; Wingate Russotti, Shapiro, Moses & Halperin; William Schwitzer & Associates — and 12 people described as “runner-claimant defendants.”
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