A man at the center of a massive financial fraud case and his partner are claiming in a lawsuit that the husband of Broward County Click here for restaurant inspection reports Mayor Stacy Ritter failed to repay more than $2 million in loans.
Steven Steiner, the former vice president of Mutual Benefits Corp., and his domestic partner, Henry Fecker, want the money from Klenet so they can pay a $4 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Prosecutors describe Mutual Benefits as a $1 billion Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors worldwide.
Klenet said he “personally” owes nothing. “They are looking for a way to collect any money they can from anyone they can think of to satisfy huge obligations they owe to the SEC,” he said.
Klenet had been the lobbyist for Mutual Benefits when he decided to buy Life Settlements International in 2004. Both companies are in the viatical or life settlements industry, which gained prominence in the 1990s for buying the rights to receive insurance proceeds on the terminally ill or elderly people when they die.
Russ Klenet told lawyers for the SEC and Mutual Benefits in a 2005 deposition that he paid $1.7 million for Life Settlements, then based in Nashville. The lawsuit alleges he sold the firm to Cantor Fitzgerald in July for more than $1.6 million.
Klenet said Wednesday that he has talked to neither Steiner nor Fecker in at least four years. In his 2005 deposition, Klenet detailed his ties to Mutual Benefits, his purchase of Life Settlements and his relationship with Steiner and Fecker.
Read complete article at Sun-Sentinel.com:
Lawsuit alleges husband of Broward County mayor failed to repay $2 million in loans
[...] Lawsuit from Mutual Benefits Executives [...]