A county with one of the highest volumes of insurance fraud cases in Washington has filed its first changes under a new agreement with the state’s insurance regulator.
The Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office filed insurance fraud charges in Pierce Co. Superior Court against Ulrich W. Motchoffo-Kom on June 4.
The case was enabled under an interagency agreement with the Washington Office of the Insurance Commissioner.
Pierce County was the source of the second-highest volume of insurance fraud cases referred to the OIC in 2025, with 561 cases. The OIC asked the state Legis
lature for an appropriation during the 2025 session to support a partnership, providing funding to the Pierce County prosecutor for insurance fraud referrals from the OIC.
Motchoffo-Kom was charged with attempted first-degree theft, false claims or proof, forgery, and second-degree identify theft.
After an August 2024 collision, he allegedly filed falsified documents with his insurer, Liberty Mutual, reporting injuries and lost wages as a result with a total loss exposure of $54,206.
North Carolina investment firm founder Greg Lindberg was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in pri
son for siphoning more than $2 billion in reserves backing insurance policies and using the proceeds to pay for jets, mansions and a 214-foot yacht.
Lindberg, 56, pleaded guilty in 2024 to conspiring to defraud insurers and thousands of policy holders in one of the largest insurance frauds in US history, federal pro
secutors said in a statement. He was separately convicted at trial of conspiring to bribe the elected state insurance commissioner and replace a senior regulator who oversaw his companies.
Claiming he’d be the next Warren Buffett, Lindberg sought to acquire insurance companies with long-term liabilities that he would place in assets affiliated with his inv
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estment firm, Global Growth, the government said. But he went to “unlawful extremes” by investing too much, flouting asset rules and deceiving regulators and third part
ies about the transactions, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
“Lindberg’s scheme depended on the illusion — which he fraudulently promoted — that he operated separate insurance companies with separate assets for the benefit of separate policyholders,” prosecutors wrote. “In
reality, Lindberg treated all his companies, insurance or not, as one big pool of money that belonged to him to use as he pleased.”
US District Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr. sentenced Lindberg at a hearing in federal court in Charlo
tte, North Carolina. That prison term was less than the 14 1/2 years sought by prosecutors. His defense lawyers had asked for the 40 months he’s already served in prison.
“As a result of Lindberg’s conduct, his insurance companies, third-party entities and policyholders suffered substantial financial hardship, and multiple of his insuran
ce companies have been placed in rehabilitation and liquidation,” the Justice Department said in its s
tatement. “To date, thousands of individual policyholders and other victims are collectively still owed more than $1 billion.”
