Vladimir Kara-Murza, a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin who was sentenced to 25 years in a Russian prison, was on his way to freedom after he was released during a prisoner swap when an FSB agent shared ominous parting advice. 

“‘Be careful about what you eat. You know how these things happen,'” Kara-Murza said he was told. 

Kara-Murza had already survived two poisonings — first in 2015 and then again in 2017. He was then arrested in 2022 and tried for treason last year after denouncing Putin’s war on Ukraine. 

Kara-Murza knew the risks that come with speaking out against Putin, but he did it anyway.

“There are causes larger than ourselves. And to me, the cause of a free, peaceful, civilized and democratic Russia is certainly much larger than I could ever be,” he said. 

Surviving poisonings

Kara-Murza had been high on Putin’s list since 2012, when he worked with the late Sen. John McCain on the so-called Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law named for a man murdered by prison guards. The Magnitsky Act allows for the seizure of the overseas assets of foreign officials who abuse human rights, and more than 60 people have been sanctioned. 

Kara-Murza says Kremlin assassins poisoned him in 2015 because of his work on the Magnitsky Act.

He was in a coma for about a month and suffered from multiple organ failure. Doctors in Moscow told his wife he had about a 5% chance of survival. As Kara-Murza was recovering, he had to learn how to walk and eat again. 

“It’s amazing how fast the human body just loses everything, just loses all the strength and you just have to start anew,” he said. 

Two years later, in 2017, he was poisoned again. This time, he went to the U.S., where his wife and three children live, to recover. Kara-Murza is a U.S. permanent resident. 

But once he recovered, he returned to Russia.

“How could I not go back to Russia? I am a Russian politician. A politician has to be in their own country,” Kara-Murza said. “How could I call on my fellow citizens and my fellow Russians to stand up and oppose this dictatorship if I myself was too scared to do it? How is that possible?”

Kara-Murza continues speaking out as Putin cracks down 

Kara-Murza says all of Putin’s opponents are either in exile, in prison, or dead.

Shortly after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, lawmakers passed a law imposing a 15-year prison sentence for those who criticize the war.

“We tried to warn the world. We tried to shout,” Kara-Murza said. “We tried to get the message out that this regime is dangerous, that this man is dangerous.”

After his treason conviction last year, Kara-Murza was hit with the longest sentence ever for a political prisoner. The judge in the case had been among the first Russian officials sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act. 

Kara-Murza thought it was a “job well done” when he heard his sentence. 

“I think that 25-year sentence was, frankly, a recognition that what we did over all those years mattered, that the Magnitsky Act mattered, that public opposition to the war in Ukraine mattered,” he said. “Yes, it means it was a job well done.”

Life behind bars and being freed

Kara-Murza spent two-and-a-half years imprisoned. He was sent to Siberia, and put in solitary confinement. He says he was only able to call his wife once and only allowed to speak with his children twice. 

“And it was a 15-minute call, so five minutes per child,” he said. “And as my wife later told me, she was standing there with a stopwatch to make sure that each of our kids doesn’t get more than five minutes so that everybody could have an opportunity to speak with dad.”

He thought he would never get out, so he views what happened on Aug. 1 as a miracle. 

“A large group of officers burst into my cell. I have no idea what’s happening. It’s the middle of the night. It’s dark,” Kara-Murza said. “And they tell me I have 10 minutes to get up and get ready. And at this moment, I’m absolutely certain that I’m gonna be led out and be executed.”

Instead, he was one of eight Russian dissidents released, along with several Germans and three Americans, in exchange for eight Russian criminals and spies. It was the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War. President Biden’s administration, along with officials in several other countries, had spent months negotiating the prisoner swap. 

After he stepped off a plane in Turkey, a diplomat from the American embassy came over and handed Kara-Murza a phone. President Biden was on the line, along with Kara-Murza’s family. They were calling from the Oval Office. 

“It felt surreal, it felt more emotional than I had ever felt at any point in my life,” Kara-Murza said.

Continuing to speak out against Putin 

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley asked Kara-Murza if he thinks Putin will try to kill him.

“We know what it entails to be in opposition to Vladimir Putin,” Kara-Murza said. “He’s not just a dictator. He’s not just an authoritarian leader. He’s not just a strongman. He is a murderer. That man is a murderer.”

Kara-Murza, who remains in the U.S. with his family, shared his hopes that ordinary Russians standing up to Putin are remembered.

“I hope that when people in the West, that when people in the United States, when people in the free world at large think about Russia, they will remember not only the aggressors and the war criminals who are sitting in the Kremlin, but also those who are standing up to them,” he said. “Because we are Russians too.”

Scott Pelley

Scott Pelley, one of the most experienced and awarded journalists today, has been reporting stories for 60 Minutes since 2004. The 2024-25 season is his 21st on the broadcast. Scott has won half of all major awards earned by 60 Minutes during his tenure at the venerable CBS newsmagazine.

Jeff Rapkin admits that he prayed for the “untimely demise” of the adjuster who examined his home after it was devastated by 2022’s Hurricane Ian. 

Rapkin, a Florida resident and father, said the adjuster told him his house would likely need to be entirely rebuilt. So Rapkin was shocked when Heritage Property and Casualty Insurance, his insurance company, sent him just $15,000, minus their deductible. 

As it turns out, the adjuster, Jordan Lee, was also shocked, as he wrote in his report that he believed the Rapkins were owed $231,368.57. Lee says he later learned dozens of his damage reports had been materially altered. 

“It was basically all of them,” Lee said. 

Assessing homes after Ian

Intense winds and heavy rainfall caused an estimated $113 billion in damages when Hurricane Ian made landfall in September 2022. The Rapkins had weathered more than a half dozen hurricanes inside their home, but Ian was different, Rapkin said.

“It felt like the hurricane was inside the house,” Rapkin said. “We couldn’t keep the windows closed.”

Video shows the steel roof being ripped from their home during the hurricane. Ian left trees on and around their house. The roof was shredded and everything inside the home was soaked. 

The Rapkins called Heritage after the storm to start the claims process. Heritage sent over Lee, a licensed adjuster since 2017, to assess the damage. After major disasters, most insurance companies use third-party firms that hire adjusters, like Lee, to help them with the thousands of claims. 

Lee says he leaves his cellphone number with homeowners after he assesses a house so that they can call him if they have any questions. His phone started ringing after Ian with angry homeowners on the other end. 

“Cussin’ me out left and right, up and down. You know, ‘how could you do this to us?'” Lee said. “It was really bad, actually. And out of the thousands of claims that I’ve handled, I’ve never had phone calls like that.”

“Allegations of systemic criminal fraud”

Two years later, whistleblowers, who are all licensed adjusters, say that after Hurricane Ian, several insurance carriers used altered reports to deceive customers and lower payouts.

An estimated 50,000 homeowners impacted by Ian are still fighting with their insurance companies to repair or rebuild their homes. The Rapkins filed a lawsuit against Heritage accusing the company of breach of contract and fraud. 

While looking into what went wrong with the Rapkin home, Lee learned a desk adjuster, who had never been to the family home, had deleted entire sections of his report, but left his name and license number on it, making it look like his work. 

It is standard procedure for field adjusters to collaborate with those back in the office to make minor edits, but Lee said that’s not what happened with the Rapkin report.

As he dug into his hurricane work, Lee saw 44 of his 46 Ian reports had been adjusted to give the policyholder less money. One estimate he wrote for about $488,000 was changed to approximately $13,000. Another was revised from about $239,000 to around $3,000. 

Lee and two other adjusters testified to Florida lawmakers on Dec. 13, 2022, about what one watchdog group called “systemic criminal fraud” by the insurance companies.

Ben Mandell, a licensed adjuster for a decade, did not work for Heritage, but said 18 of the 20 reports he wrote for another insurance company after Ian were altered. Mandell said that he and other adjusters were instructed by some of their managers to leave damage off of reports. 

“It was a deliberate scheme to do this,” Mandell said. “And it wasn’t just with one carrier doing this. This was six carriers that we discovered were doing this in the state of Florida, they all got the memo.”

The directive, according to Mandell, was that insurance companies were increasingly unwilling to replace roofs, and would only repair them. Mandell said what he was being asked to do was illegal. 

“It’s illegal because when I go out to make a damage estimate, I have to put what the damage is, not what they want the damage to be,” he said. 

Mandell said he was fired after complaining to his bosses. Now he and five other whistleblowers, including Lee, are being represented by attorney Steve Bush, who himself worked as a public adjuster for more than a decade. They were all either fired or left their jobs because of the alterations made to their reports. 

“Most people will not stand up and fight”

Some insurance companies are hoping customers will roll over and just accept the money insurers offer them, Bush said. He said he believes some insurance companies are unwilling to fork over cash for a roof replacement unless a policyholder sues.

“Most people will not stand up and fight,” Bush said. “I cannot tell you how many people come to me and say, ‘hey, what was I gonna do? I had to replace my roof.'”

Florida’s insurance market has been a risky gamble for years. After a decade of costly storms, several national carriers exited Florida. Smaller, regional carriers have stepped in, but since 2021, at least nine insurance companies in Florida have collapsed and some of the remaining ones have altered damage reports, Bush said. He says he has evidence of carriers manipulating reports in six different states, with the policyholders none the wiser that they’re not getting the money they deserved. 

There’s almost no transparency in the claims process, according to Doug Quinn, executive director of the American Policyholders Association, an advocacy group he started after his home was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

“The victims of insurer fraud are the last people to find out that they were victims of insurer fraud,” Quinn said.

Calling for change, waiting on repairs

Bush turned over what he says is evidence of insurer fraud to state investigators and Florida opened a criminal investigation. But two years after the storm, Florida has made no arrests. 

“If you really want to see change in the industry, put somebody in handcuffs,” Bush said. 

According to Quinn, insurance cases are investigated and prosecuted quickly and aggressively when it’s a policyholder or public adjuster trying to cheat the insurance industry. 

“All we are asking is that cases that are alleged to be perpetrated by the insurance carriers or the vendors that they hire are just as aggressively investigated and prosecuted when fraud is found,” Quinn said. 

Quinn said it’s difficult to know how many policyholders may have been given less money than they were owed. 

But two years after Hurricane Ian, every unrepaired home and tarp tells a story. 

At the Rapkins’ home, mold and mother nature are gnawing away at what’s left. The home’s split roof is an open wound for the family, who still have to mow the lawn and make mortgage payments on their rotting home every month. They’re also paying rent on an apartment nearby and $4,000 a year to Heritage for home insurance, even after the premiums went up.

“And can’t get another insurance company, obviously,” Rapkin said.

Rapkin originally believed there may have been an innocent mistake made, but he no longer feels that way.

“This is a con. That’s what this is,” he said. “This is, ‘make them go away at all costs. We’re not paying.'”

Heritage responds

In a statement to 60 Minutes, Heritage said it couldn’t comment on specific policyholders but aims to “pay every eligible claim” and had no intention to deceive. The company says, in its own random sample, about 42% of damage reports were revised downward and 26% were revised upward. 

Heritage says that since hurricane Ian, it has made “many reforms,” including updating its claims processing software, which it blames for not including the names of desk adjusters who altered reports. 

Sharyn Alfonsi

Sharyn Alfonsi is an award-winning correspondent for 60 Minutes.