Hagadone Facing Federal Charges

A Forsyth woman accused of defrauding customers through her insurance company by spending client payments on personal expenses appeared July 24 on charges, U.S. Attorney Jesse Laslovich said.

Kileen Moria Hagadone, 57, pleaded not guilty to an indictment charging her with six counts of wire fraud and three counts of aggravated identity theft.

The maximum penalty for wire fraud is 20 years in prison, $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. The penalty for aggravated identity theft is a mandatory minimum two years in prison, consecutive to any other punishment, a $250,000 fine and one year of supervised release.

Hagadone was released pending further proceedings.

The indictment alleges that Hagadone owned and operated Rosebud County Insurance Inc., an insurance brokerage business, and acted as an intermediary between her customers and national insurance companies. She was required to help negotiate insurance contracts for her customers and then receive and transmit payments as a fiduciary from the customers to the companies for the negotiated policies. Hagadone and her company had a trust account with First State Bank of Forsyth designed to receive these payments.

As alleged in the indictment, from about 2020 until April 2023, Hagadone devised a scheme to receive payments from customers but did not transmit the funds to the insurance companies. Instead, she misappropriated the funds and spent the money on personal expenses. In some instances, she fraudulently withdrew the money for her own use from the company trust account. At other times, Hagadone improperly deposited customer payments into the company’s business account so she could use the money. To help conceal the thefts, she allegedly stole the identities of several customers by forging their signatures on third-party financing contracts. As a result of the alleged scheme, many customers had their insurance policies canceled without their knowledge and had to repay the insurance companies for policies they had already paid for.

A temporary injunction preventing Hagadone and Rosebud County Insurance from conducting any business activities related to the insurance business and the state of Montana was made permanent July 12 in District Court.

Carlo Canty, legal counsel for the Commission of Securities and Insurance, presented the case seeking the permanent injunction before Judge Michael Hayworth.

Hagadone appeared without counsel and representing herself, and stated that she had no testimony to present and was not contesting the permanent injunction.