Starkweather & Shepley Insurance Brokerage Inc. reports it acquired DiMatteo Insurance Brokers effective January 1, 2026,
Founded in 2010, DiMatteo Insurance Brokers is an independent insurance agency based in East Hartford, Connecticut. The firm is led by founder Angelo DiMatteo, who will join Starkweather & Shepley along with Trina Nicholson, vice president, who has been with the agency since 2013.
The DiMatteo Insurance team will operate from Starkweather & Shepley’s Bristol, Connecticut office.
The DiMatteo agency brings a commercial lines portfolio with a track record in the construction and hospitality industries, as well as offerings in employee benefits and personal lines insurance.
Starkweather & Shepley is headquartered in East Providence, Rhode Island, with additional locations in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Florida. The firm said it continues to expand its presence throughout Connecticut and other states.
Privately held in trust since 1935, Starkweather & Shepley specializes in commercial, personal, and employee benefits insurance, as well as risk management services. Through its partnership with Assurex Global, it also offers national and international services.
Rexing maintains similar scams are “happening every single day, multiple times a day” against businesses like his and others, big and small.
“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 we’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 prevent the theft . “Perhaps,” he said, answering his own query. “But no company is perfect.”
He has contacted his insurance broker. Nothing has been decided about liability but he acknowledged that his firm may very well take the biggest financial hit from the December 12 theft.