The Insurance Council of British Columbia announced in late January that it has fined Danielle Bianca Dela Cruz $5,000, assessed investigation costs in the amount of $1,687.50, ordered Dela Cruz to complete remedial ethics training and won’t consider any application for licensing from Dela Cruz until February 2028. The sanctions come after the former level 1 salesperson charged at least $9,000 in personal expenses and gift cards to her agency’s credit card.
First licensed in April 2020, the agent’s authority to represent her agency was terminated at the end of October 2023. Within a week, the agency had informed the regulator that her employment was terminated due to misuse of the agency’s credit card.
The agency discovered the transactions when the dollar amounts listed on submitted receipts were significantly lower than the total amounts charged to the card. In multiple examples Dela Cruz reportedly purchased prepaid Visa and Mastercards and folded over the receipts when she submitted them to the agency, to limit the visibility of the purchases. Upon further investigation, the intended decision states, the agency discovered 58 receipts filed between July and October 2024, where Dela Cruz folded the receipts before scanning them. All told, the agency says she made personal charges during that period totalling almost $9,000.
Compulsive buying disorder
In November 2023, the former representative sent the agency’s director of operations an apology admitting to making the unauthorized charges. She also stated in the letter that she had a compulsive buying disorder and added that she wanted to repay the money but would require a payment plan to do so. At the time the January 2025 decision was published, the former licensee had not repaid the money or responded to any of the insurance council’s inquiries into her actions.
“Council found the continuous and ongoing nature of the conduct to be an aggravating factor,” the insurance council states in the case’s intended decision. “Additionally, council concluded the former licensee’s actions, which were in the nature of theft or fraud, to be a flagrant disregard for the law governing licensee conduct, especially given the fundamental nature of trustworthiness that a licensee must possess.”
