The Region - News from March 26, 1987

State insurance investigators arrested Sorina Claudine Vernon, 39, of Diamond Bar, for allegedly bilking two insurance companies out of $144,000 in claims for a fictitious sister purportedly killed in the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. California Department of Insurance agents had been alerted to “discrepancies” in a death claim filed by Vernon, department spokesman Ronald Warthen said. “The birth certificate filed was determined to be fraudulent. The death certificate (from Mexico) was fraudulent also,” Warthen said. Vernon, a naturalized American from Haiti, allegedly took out three policies worth $164,000 under the alias of Collete Butler and then, using her real name, claimed Butler had been killed at the Regis Hotel in Mexico City during the quake, Warthen said. The San Diego County district attorney’s office assisted in the case, which will be prosecuted in San Diego because Vernon lived in that county at the time she took out the policies.