Man gets 10 years for defrauding businesses

A Newport Beach business owner was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday for defrauding more than a dozen local business owners out of millions of dollars he was supposed to use to buy insurance policies.

Anthony Medina, 37, pleaded guilty Monday to 152 felonies, including 85 for forgery, 19 for grand theft and five for failing to file a tax return.

Between June 2003 and November 2007, Medina ran the Prompt Insurance Agency out of Newport Beach. He collected more than $2.5 million from 18 business owners under the pretense he was purchasing workers’ compensation and general liability insurance policies for them.

In many cases, Medina simply did not take out policies and kept the money. In other incidents, he would forge a document and keep only some of the money, using the rest to finance the policy, but not pay for the entire premium up front.

The fraud led some businesses to pay for their workers’ compensation out-of-pocket. In others, workers were simply denied benefits by their employers, prosecutors said.

— Joseph Serna