A former government of a gaggle of collapsed insurers was sentenced to 5 years in federal jail and ordered to pay $286 million in restitution.
Andrew B. Scherr, who pleaded responsible final yr in U.S. District Courtroom in Dallas to 2 prison counts stemming from the insurers’ collapse, is a former affiliate of a younger financier named Alexander Chatfield Burns who constructed a New York-based insurance coverage empire.
The empire collapsed in early 2014 after Mr. Burns checked right into a mental-health ward of a hospital and left behind an affidavit describing uncommon asset transfers. The insurers’ collapse was the main target of a 2015 page-one article in The Wall Avenue Journal.
Federal regulators in a separate 2018 civil motion alleged that Messrs. Burns and Scherr had raided the insurers’ funds of greater than $300 million and changed them with nugatory or grossly overvalued property.
Among the many substituted property was a supposed portray by Caravaggio that the SEC alleged was “of questionable authenticity.” Each defendants have settled with the SEC.