It all began with 'door knockers' — roofing crews showing up uninvited, assuring homeowners they could replace their roofs without paying much, if anything, upfront.
For years, North Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance — the state’s second-largest property insurer, covering roughly 500,000 policies — had been hearing a troubling pattern. Homeowners complained that some roofers weren’t just spotting damage but creating it, then blaming wind or hail so an insurance claim could be filed. One contractor went as far as telling a policyholder that the insurance company actually wanted him to file a claim and get a new roof. That visit was just one of many solicitations at the same home in a matter of months.
At a conference, the state’s insurance commissioner laid out the challenge: prosecutors have little to work with unless roofers are caught deliberately damaging a roof, Farm Bureau officials said.
That’s when Farm Bureau’s leadership stepped in with an offer to the North Carolina Department of Insurance. The insurer had access to a Raleigh home that could function as a 'bait house' — the perfect lure for a sting operation, said Todd Childers, the carrier’s senior claims executive.
Within weeks, the sting was underway. Department of Insurance investigators installed surveillance cameras, quietly recording roofers as they inspected the shingles. Farm Bureau engineers examined the roof before and after each visit. One Raleigh contractor soon drew attention, filmed again and again bending asphalt shingles to imitate wind uplift and hammering the roof to create what appeared to be hail damage.
“It seems that the roofing industry has some bad actors,” Childers told Insurance Journal. “But there are a lot of good roofing companies, too.”
Last week, North Carolina authorities brought insurance fraud charges against Robert Allen Bentley, a senior project manager with A&M Premier Roofing and Construction, after he was allegedly videotaped manipulating roof shingles at the bait house.
It marked NC Farm Bureau’s first involvement in a roof sting, Childers said. The Department of Insurance has carried out similar operations in the past, including a 2020 case in which a roofer had charges dropped after agreeing to repay the insurer $30,694, said Barry Smith, a DOI spokesperson. Smith added that Commissioner Mike Causey is committed to expanding these investigations — tripling the number of special-agent fraud investigators and hiring special prosecutors to help local district attorneys pursue fraudulent actors.
DOI and Farm Bureau officials indicated that additional bait houses are likely to go live in 2026.
“We intend to aggressively investigate any fraud activity we’re aware of,” Childers said. “We know one arrest is not going to make this go away. But it can help educate policyholders to this type of scheme.”
The strategy could spread to other states and insurers. The arrest has sent ripples through the property insurance industry, with carriers reaching out to Farm Bureau for more information. Farm Bureau noted that some insurance defense attorneys have long pushed for nationwide action, and the early success of North Carolina’s sting could be the start of a broader crackdown.
Prosecutions are tricky without video proof, Childers said. Homeowners usually don’t know when roofers deliberately damage their homes, so they can’t provide strong testimony. Often, it comes down to a battle between experts to decide whether creases or dents in shingles were intentional. If fraud can’t be clearly established, insurers may end up paying the claim anyway — particularly when policies cover vandalism.
He suggested that insurers might have a potential angle: contractors who “find” damage and calculate the precise claim amount could be accused of performing claims adjusting without holding an adjuster’s license.
"One thing is clear,” Childers noted. Roof claims — and roof fraud — appear to be climbing. Homeowners have filed sharply more claims for roof damage in recent years. “Roof fraud is a growing problem in the U.S.,” he said.
NC Farm Bureau now manages approximately 220,000 claims each year, with roughly 55,000 coming from homeowners. When Hurricane Helene swept through western North Carolina in 2024, the insurer received about 17,000 claims — most of them for wind damage to roofs, he said.
North Carolina may be a tougher target for fraudulent roof claims and related lawsuits than some other states. That’s because the state doesn’t allow assignment-of-benefit agreements without the insurer’s approval. Industry experts have long blamed AOBs for fueling door-knocker roof solicitations and inflated or fraudulent claims in states such as Florida, which saw a boom in claims litigation during the mid-2010s and early 2020s.
Florida legislators started limiting AOBs back in 2019 and ultimately outlawed them in late 2022. According to insurance leaders in the state, the new laws have significantly curtailed questionable roof claims.
Childers noted that after Florida’s reforms, some roofing companies based in the state seem to have headed north, looking to capitalize on opportunities in other states.
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