Good evening I’m Elizabeth Vargas, and I’m John Stossel, and this is 2020 Katrina, was devastating. That’s. What was take forms? A lot of people were cheated, a lot of people were cheated, and these two sisters say they saw the cheating firsthand as independent adjusters working exclusively for State Farm Insurance. 
Tonight, Cory, Rigsby and her younger sister Kari are speaking publicly for the first time about what they say went on inside the country’s largest insurance company storm. We were very proud to work with State Farm and we we did believe they always did.
The right thing we’ve, never seen any kind of activity like this, what they say they saw at state farms, Katrina offices in Mississippi, with supervisors, demanding that damage reports be ferried, replaced or changed so that insurance claims would not have to be paid.
We realized this is this is widespread this damage report, the sisters say, would have backed up a policyholders claim, but it was hidden in a special file with instructions. Do not pay bill, do not discuss.
I consider this to be a smoking gun. At one point. They even took pictures of a special shredding truck State Farm says it’s. Fred’s; documents to protect policyholder privacy, the sisters believe it was done to destroy key documents.
We found, I think shock was at first, but his State Farm to put themselves out there for fraudulent activity like this is huge, knowing that they could get caught the Rigsby’s. Sisters, allegations, if proven, would support the suspicions of thousands of homeowners along the Mississippi Gulf Coast who have not been able to get the insurance money to rebuild their homes.
State Farm covers almost a third of the homeowners in this area and in lawsuits. Many accuse it and other insurance companies of wrongly denying or low-balling their claims. It’s cruel and it’s, fraud and every damn thing I can think about it.
This was the front porch of stanchions retired. Dr. Wesley McFarland says he was outraged to be told by the State Farm adjuster. He would collect nothing for the total loss of his four hundred thousand dollar home, where his family had lived for decades, devastating news for him and especially for his wife, rosemary.
She just set there and she cried a little bit and she said well. What are we gonna? Do the wind’s, refugees from Vietnam, who scrimped and saved to make a home for their three children, got the same devastating news from State Farm.
When I was told that they denied my claim, I came out here and I cried. I sat on this one right here and I cry until 3:30. In the morning, wind damage is supposed to be covered under state foreign policy and during Katrina they were gusts of up to 145 miles an hour, but water damage is not covered.
Rigsby’s. Sisters say what they discovered was that State Farm did whatever it could to find. The damage was caused by water to avoid having to pay. So as long as it’s watered as long as well, they’re very happy.
But if it’s wind damage than everything changes, then they’re on the hook. Exactly the sisters say they saw a senior State Farm coordinator, go to great lengths to pressure outside engineers to prepare reports, concluding that damage was caused by water, not wind, and she pulled out an engineer report and she was flipping through it.
Can you believe this engineer said when damaged call this company and tell them if we don’t they don’t change their report? We’re, not paying their invoice, so you heard that I was standing up football and – and I believe she then followed up by saying – look at all these – that she had a stack of engineering reports on her desk on her desk and she said, Look at all these engineering reports that happened to have to go back or have to be changed.
It took three Engineering reports for State Farm to get one that concluded the winds damage was caused by water State Farm mistakenly sent her the first two which both concluded wind damage, was predominantly the blame they tried to cheat me.
They tried to cheat me right here. The winds now living in a trailer have hired a lawyer to sue State Farm. Whoever said calm comes after the storm, probably had a State Farm agent in its commercials and slogans.
State Farm has long cultivated its image as the good neighbor. They are not good neighbor and they’re, not our friend anymore. They are not, but the company says it has paid more than a billion dollars in claims in Mississippi and denies cheating anyone.
We have not been cheated. We, of course we have not been cheated instead of a company official State Farm, provided a Mississippi lawyer Wayne Drinkwater, who told me in advance, he had not been given the facts.
To answer many of our questions. Brian I don’t know what the facts are behind there. I don’t know what happened. Brian, I don’t, know the facts behind this case. As I have told you, but State Farm’s. Lawyers strongly denied the company had demanded changes in engineering reports to harm policyholders.
I just put no counter on the firm’s to come to any kind of pre set result. We do not do that. You don’t promise more work or take away work based on results of reports. We do not do that because we’re told by people who work for you, that’s, exactly what happened right here: Brian, that is not State Farm’s policy and as far as I know, we have no evidence That that has occurred, but it’s, not just the Rigsby’s.
Sisters who say something funny has happened with the engineering reports certified engineer. James can Overstreet says his report about the cause of the damage to the house that once stood here was secretly changed.
Now, when I came out here, there was just snap trees everywhere. You know, just from the basis of that there’s, a percentage wind damage to the house. His initial report concluded the damage was caused in large part by the wind, but Overstreet says someone apparently at the engineering firm wrote a new report for State Farm three months later, changing the conclusions from wind to water and then signed his name without his knowledge or Approval is that your signature, no mine’s a little different than that didn’t.
You didn’t sign this. No did you write their words saying that it was rising waters and mine said wind, a combination of wind, so somebody else wrote this and put your name to it. That’s. What it appears the engineering firm denies being pressured and says it stands by the final report.
The Rigsby sisters have now downloaded thousands of documents from State Farm computer files and turned them and their own detailed statements over to federal and state prosecutors. Two Mississippi’s, best-known trial lawyer eyes, popped out on the altered engineering reports and in a systematic way in which they were going about treating homeowners, Dickie Scruggs.
The lawyer who took on the big tobacco companies is now taking on State Farm and the Rigsby sisters. Allegations are a big part of his lawsuits and the Rigsby sisters. They know where the bodies are buried, they know who’s, who, in that organization they know how it works, and do you think the sisters have evidence that goes to criminal behavior? If this hidden criminal, nothing is State Farm’s.
Lawyer maintains he had never heard of the Rigsby sisters. You’re familiar with them. I am NOT a State Farm. Familiar with. I do not know the answer to that. The Rigsby sisters say that is hard to believe.
They say they told State Farm and its lawyers that they had given prosecutors, thousands of company documents – and they said okay well, just want to let you know right up front. This is what we’ve done.
We believe there’s been fraudulent activity, and this and we’ve turned it over for investigation, and then we were suspended at that point. Well, the Rigsby sisters, turning against State Farm was a big decision after working for the company.
For more than eight years, but it was when they came across the case of dr. McFarland that they decided they had no choice but to go to authorities. And I had to be the one to tell them that we would not pay them any any money for their home and you thought you were doing wrong. 
Oh, absolutely, it was got retching, it was, it was horrible, it was wrong and – and we weren’t, we were hurting him and we didn’t have to all dr. McFarland and his wife could do was to collect from the limited Federal Flood Insurance Program, they were forced to live in a trailer just a few feet from where the family home once stood, rosemary McFarland will never see their home rebuilt.
She died this June that contributed to Rosemary’s, death. How so because she started going down everybody, there suffered almost a morbid depression. They had depressed and blamed State Farm yeah they don’t.
They haven’t, got any money from their insurance that they thought they and which would have put them back in to their lives.