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The Brothers Ben-Cohain  

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In 1990 Moshe Ben-Cohain and Menashe Ben-Cohain started a course of  conduct that led to their arrest for insurance fraud. They failed to  appear after posting bond and are, along with their co-conspirator, Raz  Rosenberg, fugitives.  

The Ben-Cohain brothers, quite by accident, came upon an imaginative  fraud. The Los Angeles County District Attorney, after a lengthy  investigation, charged them with violation of Penal Code \\xa7 550,  insurance fraud, among others related crimes.  The Ben-Cohain brothers operated a small furniture assembly facility in  Los Angeles County. They imported knocked-down children\\u2019s furniture  (made of composition wood and Formica laminates) from Israel. They hoped  to sell it to wealthy people in Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles who  wished to support the State of Israel. 

The quality of the merchandise,  however, was not high and the Ben-Cohain brothers had difficulty making a  profit.  In 2019 the rains came to Southern California and a skylight in their  industrial building leaked some water onto a small amount of their  composition board furniture. They called their insurance agent, reported  a claim, and with invoices for most of the merchandise they presented  and received $75,000 for their actual water damage loss.  Shortly thereafter they called the insurer and a claim was presented for  $1,000,000. The insurer, unsuspecting, retained salvors to inventory  the damaged furniture and determine if any had a value in salvage. While  the salvors were doing their work, one laborer came up to him and  whispered:  \\u201cSenior, no es accidente!\\u201d  Although the salvor spoke no Spanish he understood what was said to him.  

The fraud investigator, Martin Sandiego of the Department of Insurance  fraud division, commenced the criminal investigation that resulted in a  presentation of the case to the Los Angeles County District Attorney\\u2019s  Office. After considerable work by American Indemnity, its counsel and  almost a year of detailed investigation by the Fraud Division, the Los  Angeles County District Attorney filed seven felony counts against each  brother for insurance fraud and grand theft.  They arrested both brother\\u2019s Ben-Cohain while they were parked illegally  near a night club on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. After spending  a weekend in the County Jail, the brothers were released on $75,000  cash bonds. They left town and forfeited bail.  Besides million dollar frauds, like that attempted by the Ben-Cohain  brothers, effort must be made to bring to justice those fraudsters who  avoid attention by committing insurance fraud for small amounts of money  repeatedly.  The bail bondsman travelled to Israel to collect the $150,000 his  company was required to pay when they defaulted and escaped to Israel.  He found them only to have his demand for money met with two UZI machine  guns threatening his life. Applying good common sense the bail bondsman  returned to California and wrote off the debt on his tax return. 

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