93-3-WMR Audio on Demand presents the Preston and Steve show podcast.

And now, Preston and Steve's news updates with Kathy Romano.

It's Thursday, July 11th.

Good morning, Kathy.

Good morning in the news this morning.

Police arrested two insurance adjusters and another worker accused of stealing more than $300,000 from vulnerable Philly homeowners. Anthony Hoffman, the owner of Ace Public

Adjusters on the 7900 block of Frankfurt Avenue, his stepdaughter, Deborah Felix, and Felix's

fiance, Hartman Wismer, are all charged with insurance fraud, theft by deception, forgery,

conspiracy, and bad checks.

The three suspects allegedly targeted 30 homeowners, many of them elderly, who wanted to

repair their homes but needed help recovering money from their insurance companies.

That just sucks.

Yep, absolutely. During one incident, an 81-year-old woman whose home was damaged by burst waterpipes,

met with Hoffman, and signed a contract

for Ace to represent her claim investigators say. Under an agreement, Ace was to earn 15%

of the settlement for assisting with the claim. After the homeowner died, her daughter became

the executor of the estate between February 13th and November 27th of 2018. The homes insurer issued seven checks totaling more than $127,000 to Ace as a settlement.

Investigators said three of the checks were signed and cashed by Ace at a local check cashing agency, but Ace did not give any of the money to the family.

Ace periodically issued 20 more payments totaling $90,000

to the woman's family between July 19th and December 1st of 2018. Ace also allegedly issued the

homeowners three checks totaling more than $13,000, which were returned for insufficient funds.

The woman's daughter said Ace breached their contract by not providing the family their fair portion of the insurance settlement. She's still owed over $36,000. Another woman, Evan Butler, said that she never saw a dime of the $24,000 allotted to her by her insurance company after her home was damaged by a storm. After an investigation, the Pennsylvania Insurance Department

...