Members of the Claire Risoldi family were ordered to stand trial in a $20 million insurance fraud case last Friday.
The political fundraiser and hostess, along with her family, stand accused of living extravagantly on payouts from falsified insurance claims. The family has filed claims related to three fires within five years at their 10-acre “Clairemont” estate in Pennsylvania.
According to a local jewelry appraiser, Risoldi used “salty language” and discussed the Mafia in a meeting involving her claims that millions of dollars in jewelry disappeared during one of the fires.
Defense lawyers, meanwhile, maintain that the fires were electrical. The Risoldis have vowed to fight their criminal charges.
Bucks County Judge C. Robert Roth ruled that the family must stand trial following six days of testimony in a preliminary hearing. During the hearing,
AIG adjuster James O’Keefe said “fraud and manipulation” are at the base of the family’s insurance claims.
“Any act of fraud violates the entire policy,” said O’Keefe, who defended AIG’s decision to deny Risoldi’s $10.9 million stolen jewelry clam.
Claire Risoldi, four members of her Bucks County family and two alleged co-conspirators were hit with several fraud charges after a more than year-long statewide investigation.
Fire spread through the Risoldis' New Hope home, named ‘Clairemont’ by the woman, three times between June 2009 and October 2013. According to prosecutors, each fire started near a stockpile of highly flammable materials, including hair spray, and the cause was ruled undetermined.
In one case, according to the NBC Philadelphia affiliate, home surveillance video captured Risoldi leaving the house a minute before smoke appeared and may have been inside when the home was burning, said prosecutors.
The attorney general said the family inflated the price tenfold of Romanesque paintings that were destroyed by fire, depicting the Risoldis wearing “flowing robes gazing down from the heavens.” They also attempted to file a $2 million claim for damaged window treatments.
Risoldi accused firefighters of stealing more than $10 million in jewelry from "Clairemont" while fighting one of the blazes, Kane said.
"I knew my guys didn't take anything out of the house, but we were accused," said Midway Volunteer Fire Company Chief Hugh Hager.
After collecting the insurance money, the family allegedly used the cash to carry out real estate transactions, buy expensive cars and fund their lavish lifestyle, prosecutors said. More than $7 million in assets seized by the state included $3 million from bank accounts, $1.2 million in jewelry, six Ferraris, two Rolls Royces and a Shelby Cobra.
The grand jury investigation found Risoldi increased coverage for her jewelry from $100,000 to nearly $11 million less than a month before the last fire in October 2013. Kane said jurors also found a pattern of questionable insurance claims by Risoldi spanning some 30 years. In one example, investigators found jewelry the woman said she lost in 1993.
In addition to Claire Risoldi, prosecutors charged French; her 43-year-old son, Carl Risoldi; 43-year-old daughter-in-law, Shiela Risoldi; and 48-year-old daughter Carla Risoldi.
