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Seven Escambia, Santa Rosa Residents Indicted For False BP Claims
August 28, 2013
Seven people in the Escambia and Santa Rosa county area have been indicted for fraudulent BP oil spill claims.
Charles C. Martin, 40, and Joseph B. Doyon, 43, of Pace, and Marquis R. Seals, 34, and Bernard Cook, 39, of Pensacola, have appeared in federal court on an indictment for mail fraud and false claims related to the BP oil spill.
Martin, Doyon, Seals, Cook, and Johnny R. Smith, 29, of Pensacola, were indicted by the federal grand jury sitting in Pensacola and charged with mail fraud for submitting fraudulent claims to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (“GCCF”) for lost income due to the 2010 BP oil spill.
According to the indictment, all five falsely inflated their reported income as employees of Hooters of Pensacola Beach in their GCCF claims, submitting fraudulent documentation authored and provided by either Martin or Seals. Additionally, the indictment charges Martin and Tremayne C. Jamison, 42, of Atlanta, Georgia, with filing a false claim with the National Pollution Funds Center of the United States Coast Guard alleging that Jamison lost money when a contract between his company and Hooters of Pensacola Beach was cancelled due to the oil spill, when actually no such contract existed. Trial is set for October 7, 2013, before Senior U.S. District Court Judge Lacey Collier.
U.S. Attorney Marsh also announced that Sean D. Croft, 31, of Pensacola, appeared in federal court yesterday on a separate indictment charging him with mail fraud for submitting a false claim to GCCF. According to that indictment, Croft falsely alleged he was let go from his job at Hooters of Pensacola Beach due to the oil spill because he actually worked at the Hooters restaurant located at Bayou Boulevard and Ninth Avenue in Pensacola, not the restaurant located on the beach, and did not lose his job because of the oil spill. Croft’s trial is set for October 21, 2013, before Senior U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson.
These charges result from an investigation by the United States Secret Service. The cases are being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Alicia Kim.
Comments
4 Responses to “Seven Escambia, Santa Rosa Residents Indicted For False BP Claims”
To hear the lawyers’ ads about BP, you’d think everyone in the 2 county area had a right to some of that money, no matter what. Dishonest people will jump on any chance at something for ‘free,’ whether they deserve it or not.
I agree with Ben. There were many businesses inland that were going through a tough time because of the economy prior to the BP spill and they decided to jump on the BP band wagon just to cash in.
There is a horse riding business north of 9 Mile Rd that I know did that. They weren’t marketing their business and didn’t have any real advertising to speak of and after the BP spill they cried about it as though they operated on Pensacola Beach when their problems, IMO, had to do with how they ran the business and the problems with the economy and drug problems and a divorce along with other Jerry Springer problems after Jerry Springer problems.
They had been scamming Escambia County out of tax revenue via a glass business for years before that and have the judgments for those listed on the clerk of the Court’s website for the FDR and the IRS. Some how they keep finding ways to avoid having to be accountable for the money they’ve kept that wasn’t theirs and any receipts they used to back up their BP claim should be thoroughly audited.
Ben,
You are correct! I remember hearing people everywhere saying, yeah, all you gotta do is say this or say that, and you can get some of that money too. Some of them were actually some of my relatives (they didn’t go thru with it).
Well I’m glad these crooks got caught! Serves them right. A thief is a thief, no matter what you steal.
I may be mistaken, but I think it might be a few more than these seven folks.