Insurance claims net jail time

A Patterson woman accused by the Louisiana State Police of three times attempting to get separate insurance companies to repair the same damage to her 2003 Impala was sentenced to a year in jail after she pleaded guilty in state court to attempted theft in the cases.
Cotina Batiste, 31, accepted a reduced plea offer from assistant district attorney Jennifer Reasoner from the original charge of insurance fraud. Judge Edward Leonard Jr. accepted the plea and made the sentence executory on July 9. Batiste must pay for and wear a monitoring device on her ankle and not leave the parish until she begins her sentence, the judge said.
Batiste’s legal troubles are not over in the matter as she has a July probation revocation hearing scheduled. She was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2010 for bank fraud and theft charges stemming from a 2007 arrest. All but 16 months of that sentence was suspended and she was still under parole until 2015.
Leonard ordered Batiste to serve her sentence under the oversight of the St. Mary Parish jail. Reasoner said since the parish no longer has accommodations for female inmates, the sentence will be served in the Morgan City jail.
Batiste was arrested twice and slapped with two separate insurance fraud charges for filing three claims to three different insurance companies seeking an insurance payment for the same damage to her vehicle, according to a state police arrest affidavit.
Batiste filed the first claim on May 5, 2011, claiming someone keyed her vehicle all around while it was parked at her house two months after purchasing a USAgencies Insurance policy, the affidavit stated. The claim was not paid because her policy had been canceled.
She filed a second claim, for the same vehicle and for the same reason, on July 28, five days after reinstating a lapsed policy from Progressive Insurance, the affidavit stated. She told the insurance agent in a recorded statement the vehicle had no prior damage when she applied for the policy’s reinstatement, the affidavit stated.
State police said she next purchased a policy from Esurance Insurance Company on Oct. 10, 2012, and made the same claim, a third time, for the same vehicle on Nov. 6, 2012.
The pictures taken after the claim was filed by all three insurance companies “are clearly of the same damage,” according to the affidavit.
Batiste’s uncle, who operates a Morgan City repair shop, told investigators that he turned his niece down when she asked him “to do some illegal paperwork showing he painted her 2003 Impala,” the affidavit states.
Batiste was arrested Dec. 13, 2012, and charged with insurance fraud for the July 28, 2011, claim she filed and was released the next day after posting $5,000 bail, according to St. Mary Parish Clerk of Court records. She turned herself in and was arrested Feb. 25, 2014, for the Nov. 6, 2012, claim she filed and was released the same day after posting a bail of $50,000, the records state.
The sentences imposed in the two cases were each for one year and run concurrently.