My Mother was churned out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by two insurance agents.
She had a stroke and was unable to communicate. I had to become involved in her finances. I consulted a friend who is a financial planner. He looked at the documents I had gathered and told me to go to the state to report what he saw as gross churning.
The state representative at the DOI looked at what I had, told me there was wrongdoing and told me to file a complaint for each company involved. There were 10 different companies, but the same two agents, who were related. He told me the exact words to use on the complaint form, "A pattern of churning has been established".
After the complaints were filed and the investigation was complete, the department mailed me letters for each company stating they had investigated and found no wrong doing.
We sued. We had expert witnesses that said it was the worst case of churning they had ever seen.
In discovery, we obtained copies of interoffice memos from one company. A woman had written a complaint to that company with a story of what one of the agents had done to her. The final memo stated, "He is churning business. Fire him and tell legal to report to the state of Ohio that he was fired for violation of (the # of a particular regulation)".
We had a copy of a letter the representative I dealt with at the DOI wrote to one of the companies and stated the agent had violated Ohio regulations.
This agent was fired from 4 companies that we knew of and one of the companies sued him.
We had names of two other widows, in addition to the woman who wrote the complaint in the interoffice memos.
One of them had filed a complaint with the state, and one whose son called me after seeing the notice of the lawsuit in the local newspaper. He said he has suspected for years the agent was doing this to his widowed mother, but she refused to discuss it with him.
Despite all of the overwhelming evidence, this was in the courts for 5 years. There were 4 judges who were dismissed or recused themselves for different reasons.
One week before the trial was scheduled, the final judge granted summary judgment to the defendants citing statute of limitations.
We appealed at the district and the state and both denied the appeal.
I have a hard time believing this happened in this country. If this was a weak case, I could understand. But there was overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing.
I know I can never prove it, but I will never be convinced that people weren't bribed or threatened. There were a couple of large corporations involved and I also think this would have been a huge embarrassment for the state.
One of the agents retired and the other one is still licensed and selling in Ohio. I'm certain he is still defrauding innocent people. He got away with illegal activities and why should he change?
I have contacted TV stations, newspapers and no one wants to report this. I have sent copies of documentation to verify my story.
What I want to do is alert other citizens in Ohio, or anywhere else for that matter, to be on top of their financial transactions, and especially to look out for their elderly parents who are so easy to prey on. They need to know that the state is not protecting their interests.
Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can get this story to the public?
Thank you.
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