Hole-in-one insurance fraud earns jail time

The man who sold hole-in-one insurance and then failed to pay was sentenced to three months in jail. Kevin Kolenda, 56, pleaded guilty last October to two counts of selling insurance without a license and one count of first-degree theft.

He was arrested in Connecticut and extradited to Washington in 2013 to face charges.

Kolenda’s company, Golf Marketing, sold hole-in-one insurance to tournaments at Gold Mountain, Royal Oaks and Snohomish. All three events had hole-in-one winners but Kolenda refused to pay the prize money, which was as much as $50,000 for the event in 2004 at Royal Oaks Country Club in Vancouver.

That same year, the Washington Insurance Commissioner’s Office filed a cease-and-desist order with Kolenda’s company and fined him $125,000. But Kolenda still ran his business, selling hole-in-one insurance.

He has been accused of selling bogus insurance in other states as well.

Kolenda was originally charged with five felony counts of selling insurance without a license in Washington.