A notorious public adjuster, already in prison for scamming Louisiana and Texas residents out of insurance proceeds, last week pleaded guilty to defrauding Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Co. and a Georgia church out of millions of dollars after the church was damaged by Hurricane Michael in 2018.
Andrew Aga, also known as Andrew Mitchell, of Kemah, Texas, now faces as much as 30 years in prison, plus restitution and a $1 million fine, according to his plea agreement in federal court in Georgia. The adjuster faced of scamming Louisiana and Texas homeowners, churches and others of millions of dollars in insurance payments, and in 2023 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for some of those scams.
“It is disheartening to see someone willing to defraud a place of worship in the wake of a major natural disaster, especially when its congregation trusted the defendant and all those involved to act lawfully and help them repair their historic downtown facility after Hurricane Michael,” Acting U.S. Attorney Shanelle Booker, of the Middle District of Georgia, said about the Georgia church fraud.
After Category 5 Hurricane Michael made landfall in the Florida Panhandle in 2018 then moved across Georgia, Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Albany was left with extensive wind and water damage, court documents show. Brotherhood Mutual, based in Indiana, paid the church $183,208 on the claim in late 2018.
A few days later, a construction company representative showed up and convinced church leaders to hire his company and a public adjuster to maximize the insurance settlement and make repairs, Aga’s 2024 indictment explains. Aga has said he was associated with Loss Consultants of Texas, Texas Claim Consultants and his own Mitchell Adjusting International.
Brotherhood Mutual ended up sending three checks to the adjuster, totaling more than $6 million. Aga forged the church leaders’ names on the check and forwarded only about a third of the total to the church, the court records note.
On top of the fraud, the construction firm left much of the repair work unfinished. When church leaders challenged Aga about the work, he claimed that the insurance company was withholding complete payment.
The court papers and a press release from the Georgia Insurance Commissioner’s Office did not explain how investigators from the office came to be involved.
“At a time when victims were still reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Michael, Andrew Mitchell took advantage of that vulnerability for his own personal gain,” Commissioner John King said in a statement.
The office’s license page shows that Andrew Joseph Mitchell, of Clear Lake Shores, Texas, was licensed as a non-resident public adjuster in Georgia. The license expired in 2022.
Read more about Mitchell’s fraudulent work:
Louisiana Police Arrest Public Adjuster Accused of Pocketing Checks
Topics Georgia
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