Boating accidents in crowded Biscayne Bay near Miami have claimed the lives of two Floridians, including a Miami insurance agency customer representative and the CEO of a medical conference services firm.
Multiple news sources reported that Davide Veglia, 55, of North Miami, was killed in a hit-and-run incident when a speed boat collided with a dinghy that Veglia and his son were on last week. Veglia’s 14-year-old son was injured.
Video footage captured shots of the boat, and authorities are looking for the owner and driver of a 40-foot cabin cruiser, the Miami Herald reported. Florida Fish and W
ildlife Commission authorities had located the boat by Tuesday but no arrests had been made.
Veglia was head of ABTS Convention Services, which he founded in 1995. The firm provided services to physicians traveling to medical conferences around the world.
The same day, Claudia Balmaseda Orellanes, 33, a 2023 Cuban immigrant who was wo
rking as an insurance customer rep, died after she and the driver of a 27-foot boat were thrown into the water.
Witnesses said the boat began spinning out of control and struck the woman near a popular san
dbar gathering spot, news sites reported. The driver of the boat was injured and was treated at a local hospital.
Florida Department of
Financial Services records show Balmaseda Orellanas was licensed as a customer rep in 2023, and had worked at Univista Insurance, a multi-line insurance agency with offices in Miami.
The incidents came eight months after an August collision in Biscayne Bay killed three three girls.
See more beautiful photo albums Here >>>
When Thomas A. George and Tamika Hampton decided to defraud an auto insurer in 2019, t
hey went big—claiming that George was so severely injured in a crash that he could no longer walk or talk, according to court documents.
The Gainesville, Florida, couple’s attorney made a settlement demand to General Star National Insurance Co. for $6.6 million, contending that George would need lifetime care for an incapacitating brain injury from the crash with an oil
company truck. A video sent to the insurance carrier showed the man limited to moaning, rocking, and needing assistance to use the restroom and get dressed.
But in May 2023, the alleged fraud scheme went up in smoke.
George, 49, was a passenger in car that was stopped by an Alachua County sheriff’s deputy. George spoke freely to the officer, exited the vehicle without assist
ance, then sprinted away from the officer, apparently after the deputy discovered marijuana in his possession, according to body camera video and the arrest affidavit.
Allied Universal Compliance & Investigations, the special investigation unit for General Star National, tipped off investigators with the Florida Department of Financial
Services. Those investigators interviewed George and Hampton six months after the accident. The couple said George had regained his ability to walk just days be
fore his May arrest. They did not understand how he could get in trouble for getting better, the investigator wrote in the affidavit.
