Spitfire Aviation Owner Sentenced in Insurance-Fraud Scheme

The owner and operator of Spitfire Aviation flight school at the Santa Barbara Airport was sentenced last month to three years of probation for helping orchestrate an insurance-fraud scheme involving one of the school’s planes. Andrea Read pleaded no contest to “accessory after the fact,” which prosecutors say is “a crime of moral turpitude” that could affect her business and pilot’s licenses.The sequence of events and Read’s involvement are detailed in a 15-page report written by an investigator with the California Department of Insurance, who notes that Read refused to cooperate with authorities and likely doctored and deleted incriminating data from her office computer before it could be viewed by National Transportation Safety Board agents.