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April 08, 2015 at 05:55 AM
The Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday charged Los Angeles-based Pacific West Capital Group Inc. and its owner Andrew B. Calhoun IV with fraud in the sale of “life settlement” investments.
The SEC alleges that since 2004, Pacific West and Calhoun, a Beverly Hills-based life insurance agent, have raised nearly $100 million from life settlement investors. Since at least 2012, Pacific West and Calhoun allegedly defrauded investors by using proceeds from the sale of new life settlements to continue funding life settlement investments sold years earlier, the SEC says.
Pacific West and Calhoun did not disclose this practice to investors and undertook it to make life settlement investments appear successful when, in fact, Pacific West had used up the primary reserves to pay premiums on those policies, according to the SEC.
“Investors are entitled to fair disclosures about the risks associated with their investments,” said Michele Wein Layne, director of SEC’s Los Angeles Regional Office, in a statement. “We allege that Pacific West and Calhoun did the opposite here by hiding and minimizing those risks in order to sell more life settlements.”
As the SEC explains, life settlements are securities structured around when life insurance policies “mature” after the insured individual dies and benefits are paid. Life settlement investors purchase an interest in a life insurance policy and in exchange receive a share of the death benefit.
According to the SEC’s complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Pacific West and Calhoun made false and misleading statements about the risks of investing in life settlements, including the risk of investors having to make increased premium payments as insured individuals lived longer than Pacific West and Calhoun anticipated.
