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Santa Clarita Woman Gets 5 Years In Jail For Defrauding Wedding Site 'The Knot'

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – A 37-year-old Santa Clarita woman was sentenced to five years in jail last week for confessing to an elaborate scam in which she collected $10,000 in insurance money for canceling a fake wedding reception she had booked through the wedding planning website The Knot.

Santa Clarita Woman Gets 5 Years In Jail For Defrauding Wedding Site The Knot
Vermytta Miller, 37, of Santa Clarita, Calif., was sentenced to five years in prison in December of 2019 for defrauding the wedding planning website The Knot to the tune of $10,000 by canceling a fake wedding reception and then collecting the insurance money. (California Department of Insurance)

Vermytta Miller plead no contest Dec. 6 to felony insurance fraud and was sentenced in L.A. County Superior Court Monday to 5 years in jail and ordered to pay $22,500 in restitution, according to the California Department of Insurance.

The saga began in October of 2016 when Miller booked a wedding reception at the Galleria Ballroom in Glendale and then canceled it after alleging that she had tripped in her wedding dress and gotten so hurt she was forced to cancel the reception.

The booking had come with a $10,000 insurance policy in the event of a cancellation or postponement, the department of insurance reports. After submitting fake medical records to prove she had been hurt, The Knot's insurer, Tokio Marine, gave her a $10,000 insurance check on Oct. 31, 2016.

Then, authorities say, on Dec. 4, 2016, she emailed Tokio Marine alleging that the claim check had been stolen and she provided them with a fake police report for the theft which she had allegedly filed with the Vallejo Police Department in Northern California.

What Miller had actually done, state officials say, was forge the report from a report she had previously filed with the same police department years earlier.

Tokio Marine contacted the department of insurance, whose investigators uncovered that both Miller's medical records and the Vallejo police report had been falsified.

It was unclear if Miller actually held a wedding and got married on the day of the scheduled reception.

Along with paying back the $10,000 for the fraudulent claim, Miller was also ordered to pay another $12,500 for the costs of investigating the case.

She will serve her jail time at the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood.

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