by Structured Settlement Watchdog
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued North Carolina entrepreneur Gregory Lindberg for Lindberg’s allegedly operating a “massive fraudulent scheme” using companies that belonged to his insurance empire. See SEC Press Release SEC Charges Advisory Firm and Executives with Devising an Elaborate Scheme to Defraud Clients Out of More Than $75 Million
Lindberg, who bought several insurers, treated their funds “as his own assets and used the money for any purpose he decided was in his best interest,” according to the allegations in SEC suit that was filed August 30, 2022 in Federal District Court in the Middle District of North Carolina. See SEC vs Gregory E. Lindberg sec-v-gregory-lindberg-et-al-8-30-2022-middle-district-nc
The suit alleged Lindberg and Christopher Herwig, a former chief investment officer for the insurers who was also named as a defendant, sold assets in one scheme and repurchased them at an inflated price. An entity that Lindberg controlled booked the $57 million difference without the boards of the insurers knowing, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Also, $3.3 million of assets from the insurers was used to buy a personal home for Lindberg and more than $4 million went into his personal cash account, according to the Wall Street Journal.
And with this latest development the MIchigan insurance regulator is set to permit the sale of Pavonia Life Insurance Company of Michigan, another Lindberg company that reinsured a number of insurers that wrote structured settlement annuities in the 1980s and 1990s, to the company that owns JG Wentworth.