Florida Busts
ABC
Accelerated
Benefits Corp. -- Worse than We Told You
ABC is the company that is suing
Kiplinger's, Gloria Wolk, and Bialkin Books. For details about that lawsuit, click HERE.
Out of 224 pages, we had one
paragraph about this company in Cash
for the Final Days - the book that they want banned.
We stated that Accelerated Benefits
Corp. (ABC) of Winter Park, Florida solicited viators and investors in California but was
not licensed to transact business with CA. viators. To this day it is not licensed in CA.
We also stated that the company was holding seminars in a number of states.
It was on the basis of this that ABC filed a lawsuit against Wolk and Bialkin Books. Their
suit against Kiplinger's was due to the thoroughly researched, completely factual, and
well-written article in the March 1999 issue of Personal Finance. Their threat to Ralph
Nader? The only reason has to be their sheer stupidity.
Now we have evidence of "he who
laughs last laughs best."
In August 1999 the state of Florida
announced it was taking action to pull ABC's viatical license, according to Insurance
Commissioner Bill Nelson. The reason: Dr. Jesse LaMonda's brother, Keith, who is listed as ABC's vice
prez. A media release from the Dept. of Insurance states:
A Las Vegas man is linked to a Florida viatical company through a Nevada firm, even though
state officials here previously banned him from management, ownership or other involvement
in the company. As a result, state Treasurer and Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson, in an
order issued Aug. 5, took steps to yank the company's license to deal viaticals here. The
Orlando-based Accelerated Benefits Corp. now has 21 days to contest Nelson's Order to Show
Cause or surrender its Certificate of Authority as a viatical settlement provider.
Viatical settlement providers, like
Accelerated Benefits, are in the business of buying life insurance policies at a discount,
usually from the terminally ill, and then reselling them to investors. It's a legitimate
business that has its roots in the AIDS crisis. But Accelerated Benefits is not the only
viatical company being probed by the Florida Department of Insurance. At least five of the
state's eight licensed viatical providers currently are under scrutiny for having dealt in
policies obtained from insurers through "cleansheeting." This is a practice that
involves hiding terminal medical conditions from a life insurer in order to obtain a
policy for resale to investors. "We're going to clean up this industry," Nelson
said today.
Florida insurance
officials discovered that ownership of Accelerated Benefits was, transferred last year to
the LaMonda Management Family United Partnership, which included as a partner a Nevada
company called Diverse World Enterprises Inc. Corporate records there reflect that C.
Keith LaMonda is president, secretary, treasurer and sole director of Diverse World
Enterprises.
SOURCE Florida Department of Insurance
To read the entire
media release from the Dept. of Insurance, click Here
To read about
ABC's lawsuit against its enemies, click
HERE
