Prosecutors drop charges against contractor in Florida insurance fraud case
When he was arrested on theft and fraud charges in 2023, contractor Ricky McGraw was held up as the poster child for Florida’s crumbling insurance market.
McGraw was the “perfect example of the kind of scum” driving up insurance premiums, Florida’s then-Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said in a news release announcing his arrest.
But on Monday, a week before his case was set to go to trial, prosecutors in Lee County dropped all charges. A spokesperson said it was because of insufficient evidence.
McGraw, who was facing up to 60 years in prison, says he was “100% targeted” by an insurance company and the state because of the volume of claims he handled — and lawsuits he filed. His Stuart-based restoration firm, SFR Services, is in ruins, he said.
“Two and a half years of my life has essentially put my company in the dumps, and they don’t even send out an apology letter,” McGraw said.
The Department of Financial Services, which is now led by CFO Blaise Ingoglia, did not directly address the case in a statement.
“The number one focus of the CFO, the Department of Financial Services and the Criminal Investigations Division is always to protect Floridians from fraud,” spokesperson Sydney Booker said in a statement.
Between 2019 and 2023, SFR Services filed more than 1,100 lawsuits against insurance companies, according to state data, a rate of about five a week. McGraw estimated his company handled 3,500 claims, mostly fixing roofs, during that time.
In most of those lawsuits, homeowners assigned their insurance benefits to SFR Services, allowing the company to sue if the homeowners insurance company didn’t pay, or if the company said the insurer didn’t pay enough.
One such case involved an Estero homeowners association that hired McGraw’s company to handle damage from 2017’s Hurricane Irma. During a civil trial, it was found that SFR Services’ cost estimates were far more than others. A judge also wrote that the insurance appraisal process was “tainted in fraud” because certain records hadn’t been turned over to the insurance company, Tower Hill.
Patronis’ office then opened a criminal investigation and charged McGraw with insurance fraud and grand theft. (McGraw never received money from Tower Hill in the case.)
McGraw and his lawyers obtained records showing that Tower Hill had first brought the homeowners association case to Patronis’ investigators in 2021 — and Patronis’ investigators and a local prosecutor had dismissed it as a civil, not criminal, matter.
“It should be noted that (the prosecutor) advised that Tower Hill Insurance had significant resources at its disposal and ultimately was not required to pay the claim or settle with SFR in the civil litigation,” an investigator wrote in 2021.
No new evidence emerged since then to justify turning the case into a criminal issue in 2023, said McGraw’s defense lawyer, Mike Giasi. Giasi said the civil judge’s statement about the process being “tainted in fraud” contributed to the decision — and so did the accusations of widespread fraud against insurance companies at the time.
Lawmakers have since made it harder to sue insurance companies after officials said frivolous lawsuits were driving up insurance costs.
“I think he was, unfortunately, being made an example of, and I think it played into why these charges came about,” Giasi said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and state lawmakers called the practice of assigning benefits “fraud,” and they cracked down on it in 2019 and 2022.
McGraw said even though the charges were dropped, the damage was done.
“They got what they needed,” he said. “They got me out of the industry for three years.”
McGraw’s is the second case of alleged insurance fraud by the Department of Financial Services to fall apart in the past 18 months. In 2024 and 2025, prosecutors in Hillsborough and Manatee counties dropped felony charges against a roofing contractor accused of defrauding homeowners after Hurricane Ian. The man is now suing the Department of Financial Services and its investigator in federal court.
A spokesperson for now-U.S. Rep. Patronis said he didn’t have access to the files or personnel to comment on why prosecutors dropped McGraw’s case. But the spokesperson, Laila Darnell, noted the judge’s comment that SFR Services’ actions in the appraisal process was “tainted in fraud.”
“The sad reality is that although insurance fraud is widespread, jacking up rates for everyone, it’s often difficult to prosecute because it’s detailed, time consuming, and doesn’t make front page news,” Darnell said in a statement.