A federal jury has actually discovered a Sarasota insurance coverage representative and monetary expert guilty of defrauding senior Floridians out of $6 million, cash that the victims thought was going to money a life insurance coverage start-up referred to as FastLife.
Phillip Roy Wasserman, 66, who is likewise a previous legal representative, was founded guilty of wire scams and mail scams charges in the long-running deceit, which district attorneys stated worked like a Ponzi plan. At one point, the FastLife endeavor worked with baseball legend Pete Rose and c and w star Billy Ray Cyrus to market the rapid-quote insurance coverage item on radio and tv, and it proliferated in the years prior to it was examined.
Rather of utilizing the victim’s cash to purchase the FastLife item, Wasserman utilized much of the earnings to buy a house, a beach home, Tampa Bay Lightning hockey season tickets, his own insurance protection, and other individual products, according to the U.S. Lawyer and the 2020 indictment.
In an interview with Insurance coverage Journal Tuesday, Wasserman stated he did not utilize the cash for individual gain and provided an accounting report that he stated verifies that. He argued that the prosecution was politically determined and arised from his years of promoting openly for annuities to be classified as non-securities. He likewise was understood for Florida Bar disciplinary actions in the 1990s, in which he was implicated of calling a judge a “criminal.”
” It does not pay to have a huge mouth,” Wasserman stated.
Co-defendant Kenneth Rossman, likewise an insurance coverage representative and a licensed public accounting professional in Bradenton, pleaded guilty in 2021. His sentencing is set for June 8.
The FastLife item was explained on Wasserman’s Linkedin page as a “insane quick” method for individuals to buy life insurance coverage from “extremely ranked insurance provider.” Financiers were ensured a yearly return of 10% to 12%.
However district attorneys and the jury stated it was primarily a rip-off.
” Some victim-investors were convinced to liquidate standard financial investments such as annuities and/or to obtain funds versus existing life insurance coverage policies to produce money to purchase the endeavor,” U.S. Lawyer Roger Handberg stated in a news release. “These victim-investors were not informed about surrender costs and other expenses related to stated liquidations, or about unfavorable individual tax effects arising from liquidations.”
Wasserman paid Rossman a portion of the financial investments as settlement for his function in the conspiracy. Wasserman likewise utilized the cash to pay earlier financiers in the FastLife endeavor, and to pay lenders, district attorneys stated.
Wasserman, who called himself the “King of Annuities” and a leading fitness instructor of insurance coverage representatives, likewise took actions to avert more than $900,000 in federal earnings taxes and tried to convince witnesses and victims to prevent complying with detectives, Handberg stated. Wasserman stopped working to notify the financiers that he and Rossman had many exceptional tax liens and civil judgments versus them associated to previous financial investment programs, in addition to unsettled loans, expulsions for unsettled lease, big quantities of organization financial obligation, which he was paying himself “an elegant quantity of settlement”– more than $35,000 a month, the indictment checks out.
Wasserman represented himself in part of the criminal procedures. He now deals with a different trial on the federal tax evasion charges.
The guy, who has actually composed a book about annuities, likewise stopped working to pay completely for the services of the stars he worked with to pitch the insurance coverage item, the indictment kept in mind. He likewise worked with insurance coverage sales representatives and workplace personnel however did not pay them completely.
Wasserman, now out on bond waiting for sentencing, might deal with years in jail and should surrender $6.3 million. Handberg and the indictment did not suggest how the scams emerged, however stated it was examined by the Irs and the Florida Workplace of Financial Policy.
Wasserman stated his problems started in the early 2000s, when he assisted lead the charge versus the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Guideline 151A, which classified fixed-index annuities as securities. That would have needed sales representatives to have securities licenses in addition to insurance coverage licenses. A federal court purchased the SEC to reassess the guideline, and the firm withdrew it in 2010.
The 303-page certified public accountant report that Wasserman stated exonerated him was produced by a New Jersey accounting company in February of this year. It concluded that he was entitled to a minimum of $1 million in settlement from the FastLife program. The report keeps in mind that the accounting professionals depend on info supplied by Wasserman and his lawyer, and did not have access to some bank records.
District attorney Handberg stated in his press release that the report was an effort to prevent the prosecution. “Wasserman wrongly and fraudulently represented that he had an audit from an extremely concerned monetary services company that would reveal neither he nor FastLife had actually devoted any misbehavior,” the declaration stated.
Wasserman stated Handberg was incorrect. “Why would I have a forensic accounting report done if I though I was guilty?” he asked.
The Florida Department of Financial Solutions representative look-up website reveals that Rossman and Wasserman had actually been designated through the years with numerous life insurance coverage business. Their licenses have actually been suspended, however the date of suspension is disappointed.