An Indian-origin woman and her daughter conspired to burn down their store. (Representational)
An Indian-origin woman and her daughter were sentenced to prison for conspiring to burn down their convenience store to fraudulently obtain insurance proceeds.
Manjit Singh, 49 and her daughter Harpneet Bath, 27, a resident of British Columbia, Canada, were sentenced in federal court in Kentucky to 18 months and 9 months in prison respectively by US District Court Judge David Bunning.
In her plea agreement, Singh admitted to offering a confidential informant USD 5,000 in January 2020 to burn down the convenience store she owned and operated in Kentucky. Singh intended to burn down the store for collecting insurance proceeds, prosecutors said.
Singh acknowledged instructing the informant on how she wanted the arson to be performed, and promised him that he would receive USD 1,000 up front, and the remaining USD 4,000 after she received the insurance proceeds from the fraudulent claim of fire loss.
Bath admitted to travelling from Canada to Kentucky to help her mother commit the fraud.
In their plea agreements, both admitted that they met with the informant on the eve of the planned arson.
At that meeting, Bath gave him USD 900 in cash and obtained his bank account information, so she could wire him the remaining funds, once the insurer paid the fraudulent claim.
Law enforcement officers disrupted the plot before the arson was committed. Under federal law, Singh and Bath must serve 85 per cent of their prison sentences and will be under supervised probation for two years.
In addition to their prison sentences, they were ordered to pay a total fine of USD 7,500 and Bath a fine of USD 2,500.