Craig and Elizabeth Gutierrez, whose roof was destroyed in September 2024, are one of many individuals and business owners nationwide, who reached out to Oklahoma Watch after news broke of State Farm’s alleged hail scheme.

In fighting a denied roof claim, Craig and Elizabeth Gutierrez battled with State Farm’s affectless claims department, with an agent who had once seemed more like a friend, and with a wryly menacing adjuster named Tony Salamone who they said came off like a character from Tulsa King.

Craig and Elizabeth Gutierrez trusted State Farm. Every year, there was a policy review, ostensibly to ensure that Craig and Elizabeth Gutierrez had enough coverage. Then came the storm.

The American Dream of Craig and Elizabeth Gutierrez has been rudely interrupted.

In September 2024, a 20-minute barrage of three-inch hail concussed dozens of homes in the Gutierrezes’ Edmond neighborhood, shattering their concrete shingle roof despite its high impact resistance rating.

The plague-like storm was just the beginning of their problems.

The Gutierrezes’ insurer, State Farm, mostly denied their claim of hail damage. Over the next several months, the Gutierrezes watched as new roofs were installed without a hitch on almost all their neighbors’ homes, even some homes insured by State Farm. In the year that followed, the Gutierrezes battled with State Farm’s distant and affectless claims department, with an agent who had once seemed more like a friend than a business contact, and with a wryly menacing adjuster who came off like a character from Tulsa King and had the unlikely name of Tony Salamone.

“I thought I was alone,” Craig Gutierrez recalled of the months of struggle. “I thought it was only us. I figured it was just that one storm. But it was bigger than just us.”

In December, Craig Gutierrez read media reports: over the past several years, State Farm had been sued hundreds of times in Oklahoma over denied claims of hail damage just like theirs. On Dec. 4, Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed to intervene in a case that has become representative of all of them.

That’s when it started to make sense, Craig Gutierrez said. Drummond was attempting to charge State Farm with violations of RICO laws.

In other words, Oklahoma’s largest writer of homeowners insurance was behaving like a crime syndicate.

All Their Insurance Needs

The Gutierrezes were from Oregon and California originally, but moved to Oklahoma 17 years ago. Craig Gutierrez, 44, is one of the owners of Winters Group, which operates 22 Qdoba franchises in Oklahoma and Texas and was recently named the restaurant chain’s top franchisee of the year. Elizabeth Gutierrez, 41, has been an independent hair stylist for 18 years.

For as long as Elizabeth Gutierrez can remember, her clients have included State Farm agent Matt Pryor and his wife. That’s how the Gutierrezes became State Farm customers.

Dating from when they were renters, the Gutierrezes relied on State Farm for all of their insurance needs — two cars, a golf cart, a travel trailer, small business insurance.

As they started a family with Sonoma, now 8, and Johnny, now 5, State Farm was there with them. As they purchased their first home in the Valencia neighborhood in north Oklahoma City, and upgraded to a larger home in Edmond seven years later, State Farm came along for the ride.

Every year, there was a policy review, ostensibly to ensure that they had enough coverage. The details went over their heads, Craig Gutierrez said, but they trusted State Farm. When they bought the new house, equipped with an expensive Class 4 impact-resistant cement shingle roof, the type of roof recommended by Oklahoma law and promoted by the Oklahoma Insurance Department as a solution to skyrocketing homeowners insurance rates, they were pleasantly surprised that a State Farm examiner judged the roof eligible for a homeowners rate discount.

“I thought it would be OK,” Craig Gutierrez said. “They told us, ‘If something happens, we’ll cover it.’”

Then came the storm.

I’m Afraid Because We Have State Farm

On September 24, 2024, the Gutierrezes were at a Little League game when the storm hit a few miles off.

Craig Gutierrez was able to steer around the tempest and return home after it had passed. The scene was apocalyptic.

“The whole neighborhood was destroyed,” Elizabeth Gutierrez said. “Tree branches down, hailstones everywhere that didn’t melt for hours.”

Videos from the day of the storm show car windows blown out by stones the size of tennis balls. Experts suggest that larger hailstones are linked to theories of a changing climate.   

The Gutierrezes were lucky to have a contractor, Mark Matthews of CM Construction, who was both a neighbor and a friend.

“Their house looked like it had been shot with baseballs everywhere,” Matthews said.

Matthews had worked on other roof replacements in the subdivision. He knew that insurance companies could be surly and disagreeable, but he’d never seen anything like what he saw with the Gutierrezes.

“This deal with Craig — it’s a nightmare,” Matthews said. “A blatant disregard of damages.”

Matthews dealt with several adjusters assigned to the Gutierrezes’ claim. The first kept glossing over everything, saying this isn’t damage and that isn’t an impact, Matthews said.

Matthews explained that hail damage was measured by impacts per elevation, or hits on the different faces of a roof. State Farm usually required 8-10 impacts per elevation to justify total replacement, Matthews said. The Gutierrezes’ house had 13 impacts per elevation.

State Farm’s original assessment contained numerous errors, for example claiming their tiles were clay instead of concrete, Matthews said. The first check State Farm sent was for $1,300.

The full estimate of their damages was $161,000, Matthews said.

In the early months of the struggle, Pryor, the State Farm agent, kept going to Elizabeth Gutierrez for haircuts. She couldn’t prevent conversation from straying to their roof debacle, but Pryor seemed unaware of their difficulties.

“‘So what do you want?’” Elizabeth Gutierrez recalled Pryor saying.

Another adjuster was sent, and now their damages were estimated at just below $100,000. Any more would require approval from corporate headquarters, Matthews said. The Gutierrezes received $43,000 to get work started, but for the better part of a year, they were left living on what was effectively a construction site, with barely a roof over their heads.

At last, State Farm sent Tony Salamone. Pryor offered advance warning that Salamone was a handful, Craig Gutierrez said.

“‘This guy is a pit bull,’” Gutierrez recalled Pryor saying, in warning. “‘Don’t intimidate him. You gotta play nice to get what you are owed.’”

Gutierrez shared an email from Salamone that he regarded as abrupt, sassy. Matthews too recalled Salamone as abrasive and cocky. Salamone announced that he loved State Farm and said that the Gutierrezes would not be getting a roof replacement because they weren’t worth it, Matthews said.

Salamone bragged about how much money he was making in overtime pay, Matthews said.

Salamone visited the Gutierrezes’ home on Dec. 2. Two days later, news of the alleged State Farm scheme broke and five days after that Drummond filed a motion to intervene in the case on the grounds that RICO laws were being violated.

Reached by phone, Salamone refused to comment. Pryor and State Farm did not respond to requests for interviews.

Matthews said that State Farm’s behavior was characteristic of the company’s practices as he had come to know them.

“In my opinion, I think what they are doing is criminal,” he said.

For the Gutierrezes, it was more visceral than that. They were left feeling trapped and vulnerable, unable to move on from State Farm. It was hard to imagine another insurance company offering them any coverage at all when they didn’t even have a complete house.

Worse, Craig Gutierrez wondered about the other forms of insurance they were still purchasing from State Farm. If something were to happen to him, he doubted that State Farm would take care of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Gutierrez said it felt as though they had no protection now.

“I’m afraid because we have State Farm,” Craig Gutierrez said.

My Home Got Jacked in Georgia

The Gutierrezes were one of many, nationwide, who contacted Oklahoma Watch after news broke of State Farm’s alleged scheme.

“My home got jacked,” Cheryl Abrams said of the damage to her property in Jeff Davis County, Georgia, in September 2024 during Hurricane Helene.

“Everything got hit, the house, outbuildings, all smashed to bits,” Abrams said.

Abrams believed she had 100% coverage, but as with the Gutierrez family, State Farm paid out on only a small portion of her damages. She approached as many as 100 attorneys to represent her, but they were afraid, she said. Abrams eventually filed her own RICO case against State Farm, which is pending.

Abrams’ efforts to find an attorney may have been complicated by the fact that the chairman of the Insurance Committee in the Georgia House of Representatives is a State Farm agent, and the property and casualty supervisor of the Georgia Department of Insurance was formerly a State Farm claims specialist.

Among those who passed on representing Abrams was the Merlin Law Group, a firm with offices in 12 states, including Oklahoma.

Attorney-client privilege prevented founder and president of the Merlin Law Group, Chip Merlin, from explaining why his firm turned down Abrams’ case, but he called on 30 years of observing State Farm to level criticisms.

Merlin pointed to a recent shift to reliance on untrained claims adjusters at State Farm and to changes in the company’s policy language and leadership.

“The company is not the same way it used to be 30 and 40 years ago,” Merlin said. “They had problems even then.”

Merlin said that what was happening in the insurance world was not limited to Oklahoma, to hail damage, or to State Farm lowballing claims.

“You will find various types of protocols for various kinds of losses, across the country,” Merlin said. “It’s not just State Farm that is doing this, but they seem to be getting a lot more publicity because they keep blowing it on catastrophes.”

Stuck with State Farm in Missouri and Indiana

In Missouri, a homeowner who asked not to be identified — like the Gutierrezes, he was fearful of winding up not being able to obtain any coverage at all — recalled a weather event in April 2024 with severe wind and hail.

“We were home, had to go to the basement,” the homeowner said. “It wasn’t like a normal storm.”

In the aftermath, as their neighbors got new roofs, the homeowner received an offer of $400 from State Farm against an estimated $18,000 in damages. It wasn’t the first time State Farm had denied the homeowner roof repair. The first time was in 2006, and the homeowner stayed with State Farm because their agent was a family friend.

Now the homeowner felt wary and trapped.

“If I had a new roof and I’d already moved to a new company, I’d be more willing to speak out,” the homeowner said. “As is, I’m stuck with State Farm.”

Business owners, too, felt compelled to reach out to Oklahoma Watch as news of the alleged Oklahoma hail scheme spread in December.

In Indiana, Jake Flora, who runs Water Pro Inc., a water mitigation and property restoration company, singled out State Farm for acting in bad faith.

“State Farm is at the very top of my list,” Flora said. “They are at the top of everyone’s list in the industry.”

Flora agreed with Merlin that the abuses went beyond roof claims. In cases of water damage to State Farm–insured homes, Flora had encountered many of the tactics of the alleged hail scheme: routine underpayment of losses and reliance on internal guidelines that conflict with policy language.

“When a State Farm adjuster comes in, we just kind of sigh,” Flora said, reflecting on 11 years of business.

Water Pro Inc. — one of 100 similar outfits in Indiana, Flora estimated — had 10 State Farm–insured customers who were being denied on claims of as much as $25,000. Sometimes the reason for denial was traces of mold that had nothing to do with water damage, Flora said.

He advised fighting back.

“The only people who get things covered are the ones who are willing to fight,” Flora said. “It’s a blanket thing they are doing to everybody, because they know that people aren’t going to fight them on it.”

Texas Too

In Texas, Mindy Brandt, who runs a third-party public adjuster organization along with her husband, contacted Oklahoma Watch to reflect on the couple’s three decades of work in the industry, first as claims adjusters for insurance companies and then on their own.

“We actually didn’t know how bad it was until we got on this side of it,” Brandt said.

She recalled a claim from several years ago in which a total roof replacement was approved on the ground in Texas, then denied when the claim was sent up the chain of command.

“We now know that this happens all the time,” Brandt said. “They’re not using licensed adjusters to do claims. They are using photographers, and then desk adjusters deny claims based on photographs.”

Like Flora in Indiana, the scale of alleged abuses could be extrapolated from the experience of the Brandts’ small company, one of dozens of public adjuster organizations in Texas, many much larger than theirs, Brandt said.

Since 2021, Brandt said, they had handled 194 State Farm claims, with 35 claims now open. Of those, 11 had decided to hire an attorney.

“We do so many claims,” Brandt said. “You start to see the patterns.”

Taking legal action in Texas was difficult, Brandt said, because a lot of attorneys fear prolonged legal fights with State Farm and won’t touch a case if damages are under $30,000.

“It’s the little guys who get hurt the most,” Brandt said. “I feel bad for these people. They own their house, it’s their main possession. What happens is going to affect them for a long, long time.”

Not Only Insurance Companies

Oklahoma business owners contacted Oklahoma Watch as well.

Daniel Gregory of The Roofing Guys in Tulsa sensed that something changed after the pandemic.

“After COVID, we saw a noticeable shift in carrier behavior — more denials, more scope limitations, and more pressure on homeowners navigating claims alone,” Gregory said.

It’s safe to say that Gregory’s response to the shift was more profound than most roofers: three decades after he graduated from the University of Arkansas School of Law and worked as an attorney for several years before changing careers, Gregory passed the bar exam again so that he could advise his construction customers on ethics and the law.

Several of Gregory’s clients are now pursuing legal actions against State Farm and Allstate.

Also in Tulsa, Danny Martin of Karoll Martin Paint and Body contacted Oklahoma Watch to concur with those who had said the problem went beyond homeowners claims.

In business for 52 years, Martin said that State Farm was the state’s most egregious abuser of Oklahoma’s steering law, which forbids insurers from requiring that auto repair work be performed at carrier-approved shops.

Auto repair might account for less money per claim, Martin said, but the volume of claims dwarfed homeowners claims by orders of magnitude.

The problem wasn’t just insurance companies, Martin said. The collision repair industry had been fighting for years to make the Oklahoma Insurance Department hold insurance companies to Oklahoma law, but the commissioner always took the side of the industry.

“The main problem with State Farm corruption in Oklahoma isn’t State Farm or the insurance industry,” Martin said. “It’s the Oklahoma insurance commissioner’s office not doing the job that they are elected to do.”

A Slap in the Face

On Dec. 30, Oklahoma County District Court Judge Amy Palumbo granted the attorney general’s petition to intervene in cases of State Farm denying hail claims.

Craig Gutierrez applauded the attorney general’s efforts.

“That’s one thing that makes me feel good,” Craig Gutierrez said. “State Farm is terrifying.”

After Oklahoma Watch reached out to State Farm and Tony Salamone, Craig Gutierrez said, there had been movement.

State Farm issued two more checks, one hand-delivered to the Gutierrezes’ home by Salamone on Christmas Eve. Salamone was salty and gruff.

“‘Any questions?’” Craig Gutierrez recalled Salamone saying after he handed off the check.

The extra checks were welcome, but the amount the Gutierrezes’ had received was still only 70% of their damage and repair costs, Craig Gutierrez said. They were still out $40,000. At last, they had secured legal representation.

“But the fact that it took a reporter to move them?” Craig Gutierrez said. “It’s a slap in the face.”

The anguish wasn’t just money. The Gutierrezes’ tender-aged children now had a fear of storms, and when the holiday was approaching Johnny and Sonoma stressed over whether Santa Claus would know what to do about their roof.

“Those kids, it’s heartbreaking,” Craig Gutierrez said.

He reflected further on how the roof saga had infected his relationship with Elizabeth.

“It’s been hard on our marriage too, just in terms of communicating,” Craig Gutierrez said.

There had been nights when he slept at his office to avoid tensions at home.

“We’ll make it, we’ll survive, but it’s not healthy,” Craig Gutierrez said. “I don’t trust State Farm, and I never will. I don’t think I can trust any insurance company until I go to them and they treat me right.”