Santa Rosa man, once an insurance broker, gets prison time for defrauding customers

A Santa Rosa man was sentenced to prison Thursday after being found guilty of stealing from clients who thought they were paying insurance premiums, authorities said.

Christopher Ramos, 45, was sentenced to four years in prison. He was convicted of multiple felony counts of grand theft and theft of fiduciary funds, the California Department of Insurance said in a news release.

An insurance department investigation found that between 2014 and 2016, Ramos collected money from people who thought they were paying premiums to their respective insurance carriers. Instead, Ramos kept the money, the news release said.

Ramos, who stole more than $189,000 from consumers and left them uninsured, was also sentenced to five years of mandatory supervision and ordered to pay restitution, the news release said.

Ramos worked as an insurance broker from 1999 until 2015 under the business names See Solutions Insurance Brokerage LLC and CDR Insurance Agency LLC, the news release said.

He created fraudulent certificates of insurance to fool his victims into believing that their polices had been placed. They did not know their policies had been canceled until the investigation began, the news release said.

Ramos’ insurance license was suspended and eventually revoked in 2019. The case was prosecuted by the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office.

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 707-387-2960 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jeremyhay