1979 - GOV (Senate - PSI - Report) - Labor Union Insurance Activities of Joseph Hauser and His Associates - 215p
Report of the Committee on Governmental Affairs United States Senate Made by its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Together with Additional and Dissenting Views
(p3) - In this respect, the Hauser operation resembled a "Ponzi Scheme," or neverending chain.
1890 0424 - ASA - Actuarial Society of America - The Value of "New Blood" in Life Insurance, by Bloomfield J. Miller - p5-8
By the value of "New Blood" the writer means the pecuniary benefit which the old members of a life insurance company derive from the accession of newly selected lives, who will contribute at the average rate to the payment of death claims, while the death rate among those new members will be materially below the death rate obtaining among those who have been insured long enough to have eliminated the appreciable effect of the selection to which they were originally subjected.
If the death rate among insured lives was always neither above nor below the theoretical rate established by the table of mortality on which premiums are based, new business would still have a considerable value, for without it the companies would gradually go out of existence, and the public would be deprived of the transcendent benefits which Life Insurance confers on the individual exposed to the uncertainties of life.
AIG
2009 0402 - businessinsider - AIG: "A Ponzi Scheme Plain And Simple", Joe Weisenthal - [link]
2012 1020 - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Funeral Trust was underwater for years, records show: Aggressive investment strategies backfired for people's prepaid funds, By Cary Spivak and Don Walker - [link]
The state last month persuaded a Dane County judge to place the Funeral Trust and the Wisconsin Funeral Directors Association into receivership, comparing the fund to a Ponzi scheme with a financial shortfall of more than $21.5 million. The newspaper has since determined that the fund has been underwater for at least six years.
MetLife -
2016 0901 - NYT - Retiree Awarded $15.6 Million in Reported Ponzi Scheme Tied to MetLife - [link]
Christopher Stern, a spokesman for MetLife, said, “We are disappointed with the outcome and we anticipate appealing this decision.”
Lawyers for Ms. Ramirez said that the insurance company failed to intervene when salesmen affiliated with it, along with independent contractors approved to sell its products, sold promissory notes with “guaranteed” returns as high as 12 percent.
The notes were backed by an unrelated real estate fund called the Diversified Lending Group run by an outside money manager named Bruce Friedman.
Potential investors were told they could use the proceeds from their investments in the notes to cover the premium payments on a new life or long-term-care insurance policy with MetLife.
2016 0901 - AMBest - MetLife to Appeal $15.6 Million Jury Verdict Related to Retirement Fund, By David Pilla - [link]
Testimony at the trial proved Friedman and DLG were brought into the MetLife sales operation by Russon, who was owed $750,000 by Friedman, the attorneys said in their statement. “Friedman promised Russon half of any future income from the sale of DLG securities to help Friedman repay his debt to Russon. Friedman fled the country after the SEC sued him, but died in jail in France in 2012 while awaiting extradition to the United States.”
Ramirez’s legal team successfully argued MetLife was negligent in inadequately training and supervising its affiliates. “The evidence we presented in this case clearly showed that MetLife was aware that the branch office run by Tony Russon was not following MetLife’s own policies and procedures, and that they failed to act to correct this dangerous behavior,” Foley said.
A debate over retirement investment advice has been in the works at the federal level as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and eight financial services groups in June filed a federal lawsuit to vacate a U.S. Labor Department’s fiduciary rule update, saying the agency overstepped its authority in regulating retirement investment advice and expanding adviser oversight (Best’s News Service, June 2, 2016). The plaintiffs in that case said the rule would have serious adverse consequences for retirement savers and will disadvantage lifetime income products. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court Northern District of Texas.
2016 0602 - AMBest - Groups File Lawsuit to Strike Down DOL Fiduciary Rule -
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and eight financial services groups filed a federal lawsuit to vacate the U.S. Labor Department’s fiduciary rule update, saying the agency overstepped its authority in .