A Murrysville woman has been charged with attempted insurance fraud after investigators say she was paid to replace a lost diamond, found it but did not report it to her insurance company, then filed another claim that she’d lost it a few months later.
Rachel DeSoto-Jackson, 36, of Murrysville was charged with two felony counts of filing a false insurance claim, two felony counts of theft by deception and two counts of records tampering.
According to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Insurance Fraud Section, DeSoto-Jackson filed a claim with Erie Insurance that on Feb. 28, 2024, the center diamond had fallen out of her wedding ring while she was out running errands. She said she believed it may have fallen out while she was entering the Panera Bread on Route 22 in Murrysville, and while she had searched for it, she’d been unable to find it.
Insurance investigators said no employees working in the Panera at the time recalled a customer either mentioning a lost diamond or searching the entrance on that date.
A few days later, investigators said DeSoto-Jackson submitted a proof-of-loss form to her insurance company. The ring was appraised and valued at $9,500. She later provided the insurance company with a work order from the Mock and Co. jewelry store in Monroeville to replace the ring and diamond for a little over $10,000.
Erie Insurance hired a gem consultant to appraise the diamond’s replacement value, determined to be $9,640. That amount was paid to DeSoto-Jackson on March 11, according to court records.
Investigators later discovered that on March 23, not only was DeSoto-Jackson in possession of the reportedly missing center diamond, but she’d taken it to the Beeghly & Co. jewelry store in Greensburg to have it reset.
Beeghly employees provided a receipt for $450, paid by DeSoto-Jackson to reset the diamond, which they said she brought to the store, according to court documents.
Five days later, on March 28, DeSoto-Jackson took out a personal articles policy on the ring with a different insurance company, State Farm.
Six months later, in September 2024, she filed a claim stating she’d once again lost it, this time at a Murrysville park. She told her insurance company she reported the missing ring to Murrysville police. But they told investigators they could not locate a record of any such call or report.
DeSoto-Jackson sent her new insurance company a Mock and Co. work order to replace the ring, this time with a value of $11,663. When State Farm officials ran a discovery check, however, they saw the prior claim from a few months earlier, according to a sworn affidavit.
They also discovered that both work orders from Mock and Co. had the same order number, but the dollar amounts had been changed. State Farm officials spoke with the store’s owner, who told them the original work order listed $8,988 as the total.
In a follow-up interview with State Farm claim specialists, DeSoto-Jackson said that she’d found her missing center diamond after being paid by Erie Insurance, and admitted to altering the information on the Mock and Co. work order, according to court records.
An attorney for DeSoto-Jackson, listed in court records, did not return calls for comment.
She was released on $10,000 unsecured bail, with a March 28 preliminary hearing scheduled in District Judge Judi Petrush’s Export court.