Annuity Advisor Gets Prison For Stealing $1M

March 18, 2012 by Fran Lysiak

A former independent insurance agent who sold annuities for Bankers Life and Casualty Co.has been sentenced to more than six years in prison for stealing more than $1 millionfrom her elderly clients.

Jasmine Jamrus-Kassim was arrested in March 2011 after an investigation by Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler’s special investigations unit found that she had taken $1.05 million from five clients.

The victims, aged 74 to 90, thought the money was being reinvested but instead Kassim pocketed it, Kreidler’s office said. Her financial records show large payments to online psychics, including $20,000 paid to one psychic website in a month. They also show she spent “thousands of dollars” on clothes, jewelry, and a trip to Mexico.

Bankers Life and Casualty, a unit of the Indiana-based CNO Financial Group (NYSE: CNO), agreed to repay the victims, and any tax penalties they incurred. Attempts to speak with CNO Financial were unsuccessful.

One of the main insurance subsidiaries of CNO Financial, which focuses on the senior and middle-income markets, is Bankers Life. The company markets Medicare supplement, annuities, life and long-term care insurance, according to BestLink. Bankers Life provides almost three quarters of CNO Financial’s statutory net operating earnings, including almost all of its annuity revenue. The group’s annuity operations consist mostly of deferred and indexed annuities.

In some cases, Kassim “stripped people of their life’s savings,” Kreidler said in a statement. The commissioner’s office launched the investigation after one of the victims, a 90-year-old woman, filed a complaint with Kreidler’s office.

Bankers Life and Casualty Co. currently has a Best’s Financial Strength Rating of B+ (Good).

(By Fran Matso Lysiak, senior associate editor, BestWeek: fran.lysiak@ambest.com)

Originally Posted at InsuranceNewsNet on March 13, 2012 by Fran Lysiak.