A Florida woman was arrested on charges of making terroristic threats after she ended a call with her insurance company with the words “delay, deny, depose.”
An affidavit says that Briana Boston, a 42-year-old mother of three, called BlueCross BlueShield after they reportedly denied recent claims she made, according to WFLA.
“Delay, Deny, Depose. You people are next,” she reportedly said on the recorded call, an apparent reference to the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson earlier this month as he walked to his company’s annual investors’ conference in New York.
Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested in Pennsylvania for the murder after a week-long manhunt, as CrimeOnline reported. Some combination of the words “deny,” “delay,” depose,” and “defend” were written on some of the shell casings found at the scene — investigators have said different combinations — but they apparently refer to the insurance companies’ practices of denying claims, deposing patients, defending lawsuits, and delaying the entire process. “Delay, Deny, Defend” is also the name of a 2010 book by Rutgers law professor Jay Feinman about the practices.
Investigators in New York have since said that Mangione was not a client of UnitedHealthcare, and his writings appear to show that he had a general animosity toward the insurance giants.
The Florida affidavit says that the FBI contacted Lakeland Police about Boston’s call on December 10, noting that the words she used are now nationally recognized as a phrase “directed against insurance companies” and not the companies’ practices themselves.
“She’s been in this world long enough that she certainly should know better that you can’t make threats like that in the current environment that we live in and think that we’re not going to follow up and put you in jail,” said Lakeland Police Chief Sam Taylor.
Officers contacted Boston at her home and she admitted using the phrase “because it’s what is in the news right now,” the affidavit says. She said she used the words because the insurance companys “played games and deserved karma from the world because they are evil.”
Taylor said she “readily admitted” what she said but added “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Well, you don’t get to pull that back after you say it,” the chief said.
Boston was arrested on charges of threats to conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism.
In court this week, her attorney asked a judge to release her on her own recognizance, but the judge set bond at $100,000, saying it was “appropriate considering the status of our country at this point.”
