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A Honduras woman this week was sentenced to less than two years in federal prison for her role in paying Florida construction workers off the books and avoiding $1.2 million in workers’ compensation premiums and almost $2 million in federal taxes.

Ana Romero, 43, of Honduras, worked with co-conspirators to set up a shell company known as Universal Florida Construction LLC, based in the Orlando area, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida and the 2023 indictment.

In 2018 and 2019, Romero and others, in exchange for a fee from contractors and subcontractors, provided false certificates of insurance, which construction firms used as proof of workers’ comp coverage.

“In reality, Universal Florida Construction’s insurance policy was issued based on a fraudulent application that never disclosed that contractors and subcontractors would be employing workers who were ostensibly insured under the shell company’s barebones insurance policy,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a statement. “As a result of contractors and subcontractors using Universal Florida Construction’s proof of insurance, but never paying any insurance premiums, the insurance company was defrauded more than $1.2 million.”

NorGUARD Insurance Co., a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway and now operating under the name Berkshire Hathaway GUARD Insurance Companies, was cheated out of premiums with the use of an insurance application that vastly underreported the payroll and number of workers on the job sites.

“Although NorGUARD believed it was providing coverage for the $55,000 of payroll reflected in the workers’ compensation insurance application, the contractors’ actions caused NorGUARD to, in fact, provide coverage for approximately $7,687,727 in payroll,” the indictment explains.

A correct premium for all the workers would have been $1,213,434, the indictment notes.

In addition to prison time and three years of supervision after release, Romero was ordered to pay $1.9 million to the Internal Revenue Service. Restitution to NorGUARD was not mentioned in the court documents.

One of her co-conspirators, Oscar Molina-Avila, was previously sentenced to four years and four months’ imprisonment for his role in the scheme. Co-defendant Jose Molina-Herrera was previously sentenced to two years and three months’ imprisonment, prosecutors said.

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