Kansas Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt this week announced a Sedgwick county man has been senten
ced to 18 months of probation for insurance fraud.
Shawn Gales, age 37, pleaded guilty on December 18, 2025, in Sedgwick County District Court to one count of Fraudulent Insurance Act, a level 8 Nonperson Fe
lony and one count of Interference with Law Enforcement. Gales
fraudulently reported his dirt bike as stolen to his insurance company for a payout on the bike’s loan.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months probation for insurance fraud. Gales was ordered to p
ay $2,273.93 to Progressive Insurance and $1,757.50 to Golden Plains Credit Union in restitution.
The Kansas Department of Insurance investigated this case which was prosecuted by the Kansas Attorney General’s Office.
These scams are part of organized retail crime that costs the ave
rage American family more than $500 annually, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Rexing contends the lobster meat thief used fake documents and a fake commercial driver’s license to pose as a driver for the legitimate carrier he hired.
Rexing maintains similar scams are “happening every single day, multiple times a day” against businesses like his and others, big and small.
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“As a society we look at crime like this as white collar; it’s a big business that just writes the check and it’s no
big deal,” he told Insurance Journal. “Well, it is a big deal and ultimately what I have been trying to explain to folks is, while w
e’re paying for it today, at the end of the day the consumer’s the one paying this and we need to take it seriously.”
Rexing said the police in the town of Taunton where the storage facility is located told him that there had been
a similar theft of crab meat cargo from the same storage facility just 10 days earlier.
Rexing said he is not interested in finger pointing. He mused whether his firm, the storage facility, the food supplier, or someone else could have done more to pr
vent the theft . “Perhaps,” he said, answering his own query. “But no company is perfect.”