For more than a year, a 31-year-old Fort Lauderdale gas station attendant was able to defraud Progressive Insurance of more than $44,700 before the insurer and state authorities caught up with him, according to an arrest affidavit.
The scheme worked like this: In 2024 and 2025, Adam Mahmoud Otrok used family members’ and co-workers’ identification information to submit false insurance applications on luxury vehicles that he did not own, investigators’ court filings and the Florida Department of Financial Services explained.
He would send electronic premium payments to Progressive from an empty bank account then would immediately stop payment, cancel the policies and ask for a refund from the insurance company.
Altogether, Otrok attempted to gain some $206,000 through the fraudulent plan but the insurer later denied many of the refund requests after a bank returned premium payment requests as unpaid, a detective with the DFS Criminal Investigations Division said in the arrest affidavit filed in Broward County Circuit Court. In some instances, “due to Progressive’s internal monitoring, defendant was unsuccessful in obtaining refunds for the unpaid premiums,” the investigator noted.
Investigators obtained bank account records and more than 100 recordings made by Progressive of Otrok speaking with insurance representatives. Investigators also interviewed the man’s fellow employees at the Fort Lauderdale gas station.
Otrok was able to access co-workers’ personal identification information when the gas station owner traveled to Morocco for several months. At least seven of Otrok’s family members live in the Middle East, the investigators’ court filing indicates.
In one example, records show the defendant applied for five policies online on Jan. 10, 2025. Two weeks later, Otrok “requested refunds for the same accounts through Progressive calls in which he identified himself as his father,” the investigator noted. The refunds were transferred to Otrok’s bank account.
“During the recordings of the defendant calling Progressive, the defendant can be heard conducting business at the gas station he was employed at,” while he was on hold.
Otrok was charged with insurance fraud and grand theft. He was booked into jail in Broward County and was released on bond Aug. 7. He has entered a plea of not guilty.
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Florida
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