Insurance Fraud Charges in Colorado: C.R.S. 18-5-211 Penalties

Insurance fraud in Colorado, C.R.S. § 18-5-211, covers a wide range of conduct — from lying on an application to staging a car accident to collect a payout. The statute splits into several distinct violations, each with its own penalty, so how you’re charged depends heavily on exactly what you’re accused of doing.

What Counts as Insurance Fraud

The statute criminalizes several distinct acts, each requiring intent to defraud:

• Submitting a false or incomplete insurance application that results in a policy being issued
• Presenting an insurance claim containing false material information, or withholding required information
• Causing or participating in a staged vehicular collision to support a fraudulent claim
• Presenting a claim for a loss that occurred outside the coverage period
• Submitting false material in support of, or opposition to, a claim for benefits
• Knowingly diverting or misappropriating insurance premium funds from a trust account
• Making or presenting a fake certificate of insurance

How It’s Classified and Sentenced

Unlike many fraud statutes, insurance fraud does not scale with dollar value — it scales with which subsection applies:

• Class 2 misdemeanor — false information on an insurance application (1)(a)
• Class 6 felony — false or incomplete claims, staged accidents, claims outside the coverage period, false claim-support material, or a fake certificate of insurance ((1)(b)-(e) or (3))
• Class 5 felony — knowingly diverting or misappropriating premium funds (2)

A conviction also triggers mandatory revocation of an insurance producer’s license under the statute, separate from any criminal sentence.

Case Law on Multiple Charges From One Claim

People v. Robinson, 2022 COA 124: When a defendant is charged under both subsection (1)(b) (presenting a fraudulent claim) and subsection (1)(e) (making false statements in support of that same claim), the Colorado Court of Appeals held that double jeopardy and multiplicity principles generally require the (1)(e) conviction to merge into the (1)(b) conviction. The court also held that the general assembly intended subsections (1)(a) through (1)(e) to describe alternative ways of committing a single crime, not separate offenses — which matters when prosecutors stack multiple counts from one underlying claim.

Possible Defenses

Because every version of this crime requires intent to defraud, that’s almost always where the case is won or lost:

• No intent to defraud — an honest mistake on an application or claim form, without more, isn’t a crime
• Information wasn’t actually “material” — the statute requires information that would affect the insurer’s decision-making, not just any inaccuracy
• Multiplicitous charging — as Robinson shows, the same claim shouldn’t support stacked convictions under multiple subsections
• Dispute over coverage timing or policy terms — a good-faith disagreement about when coverage applied isn’t fraud