Dr. Clark
Mitchell provided life expectancies for Mutual Benefits Corp. (MBC),
thereby enabling the company to attract hundreds of millions of dollars from
more than 18,000 investors worldwide. Dr. Mitchell currently is in federal
prison, serving a sentence of 33 months for Medicare fraud (not related to
viaticals). On October 17, 2006 he was indicted for securities fraud related to
his role at MBC. He vigorously fought the Medicare fraud conviction, then filed
an appeal which he later abandoned (possibly due to the expense). Mitchell, age
49, plead guilty to the current charges and was sentenced to 10 years.
Coventry
First. Attorney General Spitzer filed a complaint against Coventry, charging the
company with fraud. Several months earlier Spitzer included Coventry in the
complaint filed against AIG. Here is the
complaint
against Coventry. Here are the
exhibits that support
the allegations in the complaint: Do you know any of the other viatical & life
settlement companies mentioned in the exhibits?
Tom Gallagher of Florida, when he was
running for governor, claimed that Coventry First was the type of company the state welcomed. Now Florida is
threatening to revoke Coventry's viatical license.
Coventry First and its principals (Alan
Buerger, his wife, Constance, and his son Reid) were sued by Ritchie Capital, which charged them with fraud.
Peter Lombardi, former
president of Mutual Benefits Corp., entered a guilty plea and was sentenced in January 2007 to 20 years in
federal prison.
Lydia Capital was shut down by the
Securities Exchange Commission, which charged the company was creating "inventory" by luring seniors to apply
for life insurance policies that would immediately be sold to investors.
