A series of North Bay wildfire claims lead to criminal charges

After the 2019 and 2020 fires, Vallen Cooper and her son, Chad, handled multimillion-dollar insurance claims for smoke and ash cleanup at the Villa Rosa condominium complex in Santa Rosa and other properties they managed.

Chad Cooper’s company, Accurate Janitorial & Maintenance, which he ran with his fiancee, handled the work.

The problem was, according to the homeowner’s associations for those properties, they didn’t know the applications were being filed on their behalf and they didn’t know any work had been done.

The dispute sparked lawsuits and a countersuit involving the HOA, the insurance carriers and the Coopers, the latter of which was settled in September.

But now, the Sonoma County District Attorney’s office has charged Vallen Cooper with three counts of insurance fraud and Chad with two. Both were hit with “aggravated white collar crime” enhancements, which can be charged when the alleged fraud involves more than $500,000.

Arrest warrants were issued on October 23. In affidavits, a fraud specialist for the California Department of Insurance said that based on a review of complaints and interviews with past and present HOA board members, Coopers’ Commonwealth Property Management filed 17 fraudulent claims insurance companies that paid Chad Cooper’s maintenance company nearly $2 million. Arrest warrants said Chad and Vallen were believed to live in Arizona.

The Coopers, through their lawyers and in court filings, deny any wrongdoing and say it was the insurance companies who turned the tables on them in an effort to deny legitimate claims.

At its core, the case reflects the messy ways people continue to be involved in the aftermath of years of historic wildfires and an insurance crisis that followed.

“It’s bad enough that people are suffering from the fires and still trying to get money back for the losses and then have situations like this,” said Daniel Ellecamp, who was a member of the Villa Rosa Homeowners Association at the time.

Lewis Warren of Santa Rosa-based law firm Abbey, Weitzenberg, Warren & Emery, who defended the Cooper family in a civil suit filed by Travelers Property Casualty Co. of America, one of the settled cases, said the charges came as a surprise.

“Frankly, I’m totally amazed that we have criminal charges pending in light of what I know about this case and what I thought was an end to this issue,” Warren said. “We were going to defend the lawsuit very vigorously, but unfortunately when you’re dealing with a very large and well-loved Los Angeles law firm and Travelers funding this effort, we recognized that it was going to cost many hundreds of thousands. dollars, so an economic decision was made, and the Travelers accepted much less than they claimed.”

Assistant District Attorney Brian Staebell said the Sonoma County District Attorney’s office is limited in what it can say publicly about a pending case. However, he said, the California Department of Insurance provided investigative reports to the local office for review of criminal charges in August. “The state’s investigation has been in the works, to our knowledge, for approximately 18 to 24 months,” Staebell said.

An Insurance Department spokesman said its investigation and criminal charges are separate from the previous civil cases. “There are a number of ways our team receives tips about suspected fraud, including from insurance companies, consumers and partner agencies, to name a few,” said Deputy Principal Press Secretary Madison Voss. The Department will support the Prosecutor’s Office throughout the case.

According to a lawsuit filed by the Villa Rosa Homeowners Association in 2021, two power washing insurance claims totaling $741,698 went largely unnoticed until an insurance broker reached out after Travelers cited the payments to decide not to renew Villa Rosa insurance in 2020. That led to a fight that resulted in more expensive insurance with less coverage.

Annual insurance premiums for the 240-unit complex rose from about $45,000 to $285,000, costs that would have to be covered by apartment owners or their tenants.

When the owners and residents of Villa Rosa found out, “we were devastated,” said Ellecamp, who rented out three units he owned in the complex. It would mean significant increases in premiums to cover a sixfold increase in premium price and worse protection against future losses.

“These are lower-middle-income families living in these units, working-class people or retirees, or if they’re rental units, they’re affordable rental units. Many cannot afford skyrocketing insurance rates,” he said.