By Colleen Jenkins
St. Petersburg Times
October 7, 2008
State Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, center, listens to Alice Bouchard, 94, of New Port Richey talk about how she became a victim of fraud. “They take the life of the elderly,” Bouchard says. “If your money is all gone, what are you going to do?” Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink kicked off her new "Safeguard Our Seniors" task force Monday, pledging to find better ways to protect the elderly from financial fraud.
Three elderly women sat around a table with Sink at the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office, sharing heartbreaking stories of how they got duped out of their savings. As they lost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on inappropriate investments, their insurance agents made thousands in commissions.
Bonnie Madden, 81, of Port Richey said her insurance agent, Randolph Kahl-Winter, hugged and kissed her each time she visited his office and called her his "second mom." "I figured he knew what he was doing," she said. "So anything he said, I believed him." Through a series of misrepresentations, including inflating Madden's net worth and forging her signature on an annuity application, Kahl-Winter generated $52,000 in commissions, state officials said. The Department of Financial Services recovered almost $300,000.
These "bad actors," as Sink calls them, leave their victims feeling foolish and deceived. The state permanently revoked the insurance license of the man who earned more than $140,000 in commissions by selling Alice Bouchard, 94, about 30 annuities over six years. Officials helped recoup some of the more than $300,000 she lost to penalty fees and surrender periods that would have kept her money locked up until she was 100. But the New Port Richey widow remains angry. "They should go to jail and stay there for a long time," she said. "They take the life of the elderly.
If your money is all gone, what are you going to do?" Colleen Jenkins can be reached at cjenkins@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3337
Abridged
SOURCE: Global Aging
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Although this is a older article, I thought it is still interesting, as we look at some of the cases. We just cannot be complacent about this issue.
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