Eastpointe Man Gets Year Behind Bars For Selling Fake Auto Insurance

LANSING (WWJ/AP) - A 64-year-old Macomb County man has been sentenced to one year in jail for selling fake auto insurance certificates.

Hakeem Sanusi, of Eastpointe, received his sentence Thursday after earlier pleading no contest to six counts of insurance fraud as a habitual offender.

Sanusi was arrested in September after secretary of state staff suspected customers had sent in fake insurance certificates to renew their license plate tabs.

Eaton County Prosecutor Doug Lloyd said an investigation revealed that Sanusi falsely claimed to be a representative for an insurance agency and offered insurance coverage to numerous people, issuing bogus certificates to verify proof of insurance. During a search of Sanusi's home, additional insurance binder forms were seized.

"Hakeem Sanusi's crimes are part of a growing state-wide problem of drivers carrying fake auto insurance certificates, sometimes without the drivers knowing their policies are not real," Lloyd said in a statement. "About one-fifth of insurance certificates presented in Wayne County, where Sanusi operated, are invalid. The general public is impacted when they find that the other driver does not have valid insurance, and repair and medical bills are not as easily reimbursed."

The crimes included conducting a criminal enterprise, uttering and publishing, identity theft, and possession/sale of stolen or counterfeit insurance certificates.

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