Tri-Cities man faces prison for staging car crash, lying to the FBI

A Kennewick man has pleaded guilty for his role as a leader one of many car crashes staged to commit insurance fraud.

Ali Abed Yaser, 52, is one of 23 defendants in the case accusing them of fraudulently collecting nearly $1 million in insurance payments.

He is one of nine defendants to plead guilty so far in the case.

But Yaser’s crimes went beyond the fraud to attempt to derail the investigation by falsely accusing a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent assigned to the case and an FBI confidential informant of asking for a $20,000 bribe.

Yaser pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, making false statements to the FBI, conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and two counts of mail fraud.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern Washington district is recommending to U.S. Judge Mary Dimke a sentence of four years and three months, according to a plea agreement. The defense is recommending two years and 11 months.

He is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 26 in the Richland federal courthouse.

Cars crashed in remote area

On May 2019, Yasir and several other co-defendants are accused of staging an accident involving two cars they owned. Another defendant in the case, a case manager at a personal injury law firm, is accused of helping by handling some of the fraudulent claims from the crash.

Yasir and another defendant drove a 2009 Hyundai Sonata and a 2014 Lexus IS to a rural area of Benton County northwest of Prosser on Wine Country Road between Johnson Road and Missimer Road, according to court documents.

Before the crash, there were three adults and two children in the Lexus and two adults in the Hyundai. But when the cars crashed, the only occupant of the two vehicles was the driver who crashed the Hyundai into the Lexus, according to court documents.

At the time, the Washington State Employee’s Credit Union had a lien of about $30,000 on the Lexus, which was owned by one of the defendants involved in the crash.

Yaser admitted to filing fraudulent insurance claims, saying he was hurt in the crash and lost wages, although he was not in either car when they crashed.

Insurance companies paid Yaser and others who claimed to be involved in the crash almost $127,000, according to court documents.

Threats by Kennewick man

In May 2020 the FBI served search warrants at several homes in Washington and California, alerting Yaser that his and others’ insurance fraud was being investigated.

Yaser responded by holding a meeting at his home and warning two people, one of them the confidential informant in the case, that he suspected another of the defendants of providing information to the FBI.

Three months later Yaser learned that the actual confidential informant and the person he suspected of being the informant had met at the confidential informant’s house.

Yaser said if he had known about the meeting, he would have come over to the house, closed the garage door, shut off security system cameras and killed the person he thought was the FBI informant.

Yaser told the actual FBI informant “they would not have recognized his face from his foot,” according to court documents.

He also encouraged the actual FBI informant to convince the person he thought was the informant to meet Yaser. And he told the informant to send an audio-recording of a conversation between the suspected and actual informant.

A few days later Yaser began discussing with the FBI informant a plan to make false accusations against the FBI case agent and the suspected informant to discredit them and to remove the FBI agent from the case.

“We will file a complaint with the police and the police will forward it to them (FBI),“ Yaser said, according to court documents.

In September 2020 Yaser was interviewed by the FBI and attempted to stop the investigation by accusing the FBI case agent and the suspected FBI informant of soliciting a $20,000 bribe from another person.

“Yaser and his co-conspirators went to great lengths, not only in committing crimes, but also covering them up and attempting to impugn the integrity of agents and the judicial process,” said Richard Collodi, special agent in charge of the FBI Seattle Field Office.

Insurance fraud harm

Insurance fraud is not a victimless crime, said federal officials involved in the case.

“Staging an automobile accident to enrich yourself negatively impacts the entire community by raising insurance rates for law-abiding drivers,” said Vanessa Waldref, U.S. Attorney for Eastern Washington.

“Worse still, after learning he was under investigation for staging an automobile accident and defrauding insurance companies, Mr. Yaser repeatedly chose to obstruct official proceedings and conceal his violations of federal law by lying to investigators, falsely accusing an FBI agent of soliciting a $20,000 bribe, threatening a potential witness and tampering with evidence,” she said.

The crash that Yaser admitted staging was one of at least 14 staged by defendants over three years, according to court documents.

The orchestrated collisions between each others’ vehicles often happened on remote roads and at night with no witnesses.

Defendants include four married couples, three sets of siblings and a father and son.

Ten of those accused in the case live in the Tri-Cities, and one lives in Eltopia, just north of Pasco. Other defendants are from three other states and Canada.