Judge Approves $6.3M Forfeiture for 'Annuity King'

A federal judge in Tampa, Florida, has approved prosecutors’ recommendation that he require Phillip Roy Wasserman, a man who once promoted himself as the “annuity king,” to forfeit $6,318,300 in cash or other property.

U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell granted the prosecutors’ motion for the forfeiture order Wednesday.

In May 2023, a jury in Tampa found Wasserman guilty of five counts of wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud.

Wasserman is an attorney who ran Phillip Roy Financial Services in Florida from 1990 through 2010 and then started American Tax & Annuity Advisors in 2010. He wrote a book about annuities and was active in efforts to have non-variable indexed annuities excluded from the definition of “security.”

Around 2016, Wasserman and an accountant, Kenneth Rossman, started FastLife, an online life, health and annuity lead-generation site that eventually failed.

The prosecutors have accused Wasserman and Rossman of using high-pressure tactics to raise capital and of misleading the investors about FastLife’s performance.

Wasserman has argued in court pleadings that he invested his own money in FastLife, raised most of the outside capital from accredited investors and tried to create a successful company, and that much of the government’s case at the trial was based on the testimony of someone who was taking antipsychotic drugs.

In a separate civil suit filed against the federal government, Wasserman contends that Florida officials had a politically motivated vendetta against him because of his work to keep non-variable indexed annuities from being classified as securities and because of his other political activities.

“I guarantee you, we will win on appeal,” Wasserman said in an email interview. “Why would I spend $300,000 on financial audits if I committed a fraud?”

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