2 men plead guilty to inventing kids, deaths for insurance scams

Bogus claims led to payouts of more than $700,000

By J. Harry Jones
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

October 11, 2003

Two Linda Vista men pleaded guilty yesterday to charges that they invented the deaths of two nonexistent children to scam an insurance company out of more than $700,000.

Gaylan Sweet, 34, and Kion Gould, 33, each entered guilty pleas in San Diego Superior Court to two counts of making false insurance claims. The plea agreements state that Sweet will receive no more than five years in state prison and Gould will get no more than three years when sentenced by Judge David Danielsen on Nov. 10, Deputy District Attorney Terry Cannon said.

Sweet was a claims adjuster at an Allstate office near Poway and was described by prosecutors as the mastermind of the schemes, which included the preparation of realistic-looking but phony police, autopsy and other reports.

The scams were so complex that fictional children were created and the lives of real and imaginary people were intertwined. Falsified police reports bear the names of real deputies who never responded to such accidents. Real doctors are discussed in reports as having treated the children. Witnesses who never existed confirmed the facts of the accidents.

Prosecutors say the checks sent to two supposedly bereaved parents areamong the biggest such payouts ever investigated by the district attorney's insurance fraud division. Both were approved by Sweet while he filled in for other adjusters during their vacations.

Authorities said Gould participated and planned the scams with Sweet.

Two other people – the parents of the pretend children to whom checks were written – pleaded guilty earlier to related charges.

Leigh Anne Sanders posed as the mother of a child supposedly killed in an Encinitas intersection by a hit-and-run driver. She was awarded an insurance check for $210,000. She pleaded guilty in March to grand theft and was sentenced to six months in jail.

Ruther Brown Jr., whose nonexistent 11-year-old son was supposedly killed by a drunken driver, got $500,000 from the insurance company for his pretend grief and suffering. He is serving a 16-month prison sentence.

Sweet's sentence may be less than five years if, as promised, he gives Allstate about $145,000 that he is to receive from the sale of his house, Cannon said.

The insurance company has been unable to recover a total of about $460,000 in the scams. The $500,000 given to Brown was split into three payments, and the company was able to stop payment on some of those checks before they were cashed, Cannon said.