Two Rockland executives and their firms have been accused of illegally profiting on a client’s $10 million life insurance policy.
Life Securities 2 LP sued Samuel Ehrenthal and Insured On Time Services Inc., and Michael Goldman and Prime Brookside LLC, Sept. 15 in U.S. District Court, White Plains.
The defendants falsely claimed that their client suffered from several serious medical conditions, the complaint states, to drive up the price of the policy on the secondary market.
Life Securities is a Delaware corporation that is affiliated with entities in Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. It buys life insurance policies on the secondary market, assumes the premium payments and receives the benefits when the individuals die.
In 2015, Hadassah Weiss, 57, of Los Angeles, set up a life insurance trust and applied for a $10 million policy with American Life Insurance Co., according to the complaint.
Ehrenthal and Goldman, of Monsey, and Insured on Times Services and Prime Brookside, of Spring Valley, allegedly helped procure and sell Weiss’ policy.
In 2019, Weiss applied for a life settlement deal, where a policy is sold at a price greater than the cash surrender value but less than the death benefit. Her application included current medical conditions and medical records submitted by Dr. William F. Skinner, of Santa Monica, California.
Weiss’s trust fund sold the policy to Georgia Settlement Group for $2,975,000, according to the complaint. Insured On Time was allegedly paid $40,000 for brokering the deal.
In 2021, Life Securities bought the policy from Georgia Settlement Group for $2.3 million.
Now Life Securities claims that the information it relied on was false.
This past January the company sought more information from Weiss’ physicians. Her son, Menachem Weiss, allegedly responded in an email that Dr. Skinner was “no longer relevant,” and referred to a new doctor whose medical records did not include conditions described by Dr. Skinner.
Dr. Skinner died last year and his practice was transferred to another clinic. That clinic, the complaint states, has no record of Weiss as a patient, and this past June her son allegedly confirmed that Dr. Skinner never treated his mother.
Life Securities claims that the Rockland defendants, “with the assistance of Dr. Skinner and Hadassah Weiss, fraudulently falsified various medical records in an effort to drive up the value of the policy on the secondary and tertiary life insurance market.”
Weiss is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
Life Securities is demanding unspecified monetary damages.
Efforts to find email addresses for Ehrenthal and Goldman, to ask for responses to the allegations, were unsuccessful.
