LIFE SETTLEMENTS UNDER INVESTIGATION ONCE AGAIN

The SEC has provided a Wells notice regarding its intention to file civil charges, according to publicly traded life settlements company, Life Partners Holdings, Inc. Life Partners Holdings, Inc. is the parent company of Life Partners, Inc., “one of the oldest and largest life settlement companies in the United States” according to its website.

Life Partners and other life settlement companies purchase “unwanted” life insurance policies from the owners of the policies who may or may not be the insured. The purchasing company then proceeds to re-sell fractional interests in the policies to third parties. The “Life Settlement Provider” purchases the policy for an amount below the net benefit of the policy. Since the third-party purchasers of the interests, through a Life Settlement Broker, are in part responsible for the ongoing premiums on the policy, the amount of time between the purchase of the fractional interest and the death of the insured is a critical element in the investors risk/return evaluation. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Wells notice issued to Life Partners provides notice of impending charges against the company and two top executives related to these critical “life-expectancy estimates.”

Allegations of fraud related to life expectancy estimates received public attention almost a decade ago in connection with Mutual Benefits Corporation in Florida¹. In that case, a doctor providing medical reports in support of life-expectancy estimates was indicted and pled guilty to securities fraud in 2007 and the company was ultimately placed under receivership. The SEC took action as well, and federal litigation followed in 2005 which was in part centered on whether or not viaticals or life settlements qualified as “investment contracts” and were therefore securities under federal securities laws.

In 2009, this law firm procured a settlement on behalf of an investor in a suit filed against a life settlement broker/investment advisor that made multiple grossly unsuitable recommendations to our client for the purchase of hundreds of thousands of dollars of life settlements. The value of the investments were based primarily upon the life-expectancy of insured persons who proved to be nearly immortal, despite promises of near-death status at the time of the viatical purchases. The Missouri Securities Division had previously taken preliminary action, albeit belatedly, against both Mutual Benefits Corporation (in 2004) and our civil defendant (investor complaint received in 2004, Cease and Desist Order issued in the fall of 2006), but both the Securities Division and the Missouri Department of Insurance failed to garner a remedy for the investors or take action against the investment advisors and broker-dealers that failed to supervise the representative/life settlement broker/insurance salesman. In sum, it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same!

1The State of Florida also filed a criminal charge in 2001.

Another Belated Trend in the Investment World?: Litigation Over Secondary-Market Life Insurance Policy Sales Practices

A few years ago, I represented a law professor in his quest for relief after purchasing life insurance policies on the terminally immortal. The defendant/respondent life insurance/investment-advisory Representative encouraged the good professor to liquidate hundreds of thousands of dollars in mutual funds and to invest those funds in to “viaticals,” in addition to an ever-rotating team of variable annuities. And like a school kid in February, the Representative moved from one RIA to another, spreading an influenza-like strain of failure-to-supervise liability.

It wasn't too long ago that I followed with fascination the story of the untimely death of the mother-in-law of the former CEO of life insurance company Conseco, Inc. The beneficiary of a $15 million life insurance policy on the elderly woman--whose body was found in a bath tub in 2008--was a company owned by a young male companion whose company she shared on the night of her death. The woman's family has brought a federal lawsuit against the policy issuer – American International Group. The Wall Street Journal covered the story with a page-one article in April of last year as well as a follow up article in October of 2010.

In the viatical case I handled, the purchaser of the policy in the secondary market suffered from ongoing premium payments years beyond those estimated in fraudulent life-expectancy documentation provided at the time of purchase. The fraudulent medicals went hand-in-hand with negligent, if not deceptive investment advice. Securities regulators prone to ADD symptomology fixated their fickle eyes upon “viaticals” back in the late 1990's and the first few years of this decade. At the time, viaticals structured upon policies insuring the lives of those suffering from – and unexpectedly still living with – AIDS was the focus on the passing scrutiny. But, in recent months it has been the issuers of the policies that that have brought legal actions, claiming that their underwriters were defrauded with applications failing to disclose a secondary-market purpose.

In the most recent iteration of the litigation fall-out, the insureds themselves are bringing legal actions. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal provided us with an example. Bruce Porter claims that his insurance agent defrauded him with false promises regarding the marketability of a policy on Mr. Porter's life, the premiums for which were being financed by a trust funded by a bank loan Mr. Porter allegedly guaranteed without his knowledge.

I just recently settled a case in which my client was assured that the 20 years of $118,000 annual premiums on a variable whole life policy would be satisfied in their entirety with the cash value of the policy. Not so much.

Most observers attribute the recent uptick of litigation in this area to the market woes of the last three years. I , for one, am unsure that there was actually any abatement in the litigation or finger pointing in this murky area of the already murky “insurance-as-investment” market.