American and Louisiana flags flew at half-staff outside Louisiana government buildings on June 9 and 10 in a show of respect for two state insurance fraud investigators who were shot to death on June 7.
Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered the flags to be lowered in honor of Kim Sledge and Rhett Jeansonne, who had gone to the Ville Platte office of suspended insurance agent John Melvin Lavergne to collect information. Lavergne shot the investigators and then killed himself.
The two investigators were unarmed, but the Louisiana Department of Insurance is exploring the possibility that investigators could carry guns in the future. Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon said the department is committed to preventing such an incident from happening again. “First and foremost we want our investigators to be free from harm when conducting investigations,” he said.
Donelon has requested that the families of Sledge and Jeansonne be eligible for both the $250,000 stipend and the scholarship for school-age dependent children the state makes available to families of law enforcement officers who fall in the line of duty.
Sledge began her LDI career in October 2000. She is survived by her husband, JC, daughter, Brittany, and step children, Avery and Jacob.
Jeansonne joined the LDI in November 2006. He is survived by his wife, Bernadette, and their seven-year-old daughter, Sharon, along with his three sons, Kristopher, Kale and Konner, and a grandson, born on May 18.
Lavergne had been in business for almost 40 years, according to the Associated Press. He had been served with cease and desist orders, license suspensions and fines in 2009 and again in 2011. Donelon said the 2009 C&D was appealed and the license suspension was eventually lifted by an administrative law judge. The 2011 C&D was under appeal at the time of the June 7 shooting. Sledge and Jeansonne were investigating additional charges. In previous investigations, Laverne was charged with providing fraudulent information to the Department of Motor Vehicles and failing to remit policyholder premiums to insurance companies.
Rare but Not Unknown
While rare, shooting deaths of investigators by insurance agents are not unknown.
“Investigators deal with people whose emotions may be volatile. The potential for violence comes with any knock on any front door, even for seemingly routine interviews simply to gather facts,” said Dennis Jay, executive director of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. “Any case can lead insurance investigators into harm’s path, without warning or a chance to defend themselves. No one can ever assume an insurance investigation is safe, or routine.”
In May 2009, former Charlotte, N.C., insurance agent Michael A. Howell pled guilty in the 2008 death of Sallie Rohrbach, a North Carolina Department of Insurance agency examiner.
Rohrbach had been reviewing Howell’s agency books for possible fraud. Howell received nearly 28 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
Howell also pled guilty to 25 counts of embezzlement after nine months of investigation into his Dilworth Insurance Agency, according to North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin. Each embezzlement count represented a premium that Howell pocketed instead of forwarding to GMAC Insurance and Discovery Insurance companies. Between March 2004 and May 2008, Howell embezzled more than $150,000 in documented and undocumented premiums, according to officials.
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