Elgin man charged with insurance fraud after burglary report

The owner of an Elgin cellphone store faces felony charges that he falsified invoices after reporting three burglaries in an attempt to bilk insurance companies out of $43,000, according to police.

Giovanni Tlatempa-Carreto, 35, of the 600 block of Illinois Avenue in Elgin, faces anywhere from probation to five years in prison if convicted of insurance fraud and forgery, according to Kane County court records.

A detective investigating a June 27 robbery at a store on the 1500 block of Larkin Avenue noticed invoices from the store's supplier were different from the amounts of merchandise stolen, according to an Elgin police report.

Tlatempa-Carreto also had reported burglaries at his business in July 2013 and April 2014, so the detective contacted a special investigator at the insurance company to review items submitted on Tlatempa-Carreto's July 2013 claim for which he was paid $10,400.83.

The detective determined invoices from the two 2014 burglaries were different from the claim amounts submitted to the insurance company, the report said. A claim for $20,000 in stolen goods and for $13,000 in cash also was pending from the April 2014 burglary.

Detectives interviewed Tlatempa-Carreto at the police station Friday and he was arrested.

"He provided a recorded statement in which he admitted to knowingly altering (five invoices) and multiple eBay documents in an attempt to obtain insurance payments for items that did not exist and were therefore never stolen," the report said.

According to Kane County court records, Tlatempa-Carreto was arrested by St. Charles police in October 2010 on felony charges of selling counterfeit items of more than $10,000 but less than $100,000.

He eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to 12 months of conditional discharge, which is a form of probation.

Tlatempa-Carreto is free on bond and next due in court Sept. 3.