The defendant is the president of The Alphas Company
John S. “Yanni” Alphas, 56, of Weston, was sentenced, in U.S. District Court this month to 15 months in prison and three years of supervised release for defrauding his insurance companies by submitting bogus claims. In addition, he had already pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in August 2014.
Ultimately, the Court found that Mr. Alphas had sought insurance payments exceeding his actual losses by a total of $450,000. In reality, though, Mr. Alphas only suffered legitimate losses totaling $19,000 in connection with the insurance claims at issue in this case. Of that total amount, his insurers had paid him approximately $178,000.
Upon being sentenced in U.S. District Court by Judge Douglas P. Woodlock, Mr. Alphas is also required to pay $160,876 dollars in restitution along with a fine of $60,000 in addition to his prison sentence.
Submitted various fraudulent insurance claims for damaged produce
As president of The Alphas Company, a wholesale produce distributor based in Chelsea, Mr. Alphas submitted approximately ten fraudulent insurance claims for produce shipments between 2007 and 2011. In submitting the claims, Mr. Alphas alleged in various claims that his product had been either lost en route, stolen, had arrived spoiled, frozen, or in otherwise unusable condition.
In reality, however, Mr. Alphas had never received damaged goods, suffering absolutely no losses at all. In addition to submitting false claims, on other occasions, he inflated his losses, often by tens of thousands of dollars.
Court gives Mr. Alphas three additional months for other misreprenentation
During his sentencing, Mr. Alphas was given an additional three months of incarceration beyond the Court’s original sentence for his fraudulent insurance claims. Apparently, during the Court proceedings it was discovered that Mr. Alphas had misrepresented his status on a license application to the United States Department of Agriculture. In submitting the license application, Mr. Alphas affirmed that he had never been convicted of a felony in federal court.
Upon discovery of this misrepresentation, the Court determined that this additional misrepresentation warranted an additional three months.
