NC insurance mogul charged with plotting to skim ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’
A North Carolina business tycoon has been indicted again on federal criminal charges, this time over allegations that he conspired to siphon large sums of money from his insurance companies and then lied to regulators to hide the two co-conspirators scheme.
A 13-count grand jury indictment in Charlotte was filed Thursday against Durham’s Greg E. Lindberg, who federal prosecutors allege defrauded thousands of policyholders, news outlets reported.
“The indictment reveals a carefully orchestrated scheme that relied on a web of complex financial investments and transactions designed to evade regulators, to disguise the financial health of Lindberg’s insurance companies, and to disguise the scheme’s purported purpose: Lindberg’s personal gain.” West North Carolina That said US Attorney Dena King after the indictment was released on Friday.
Counts include wire fraud, conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, misrepresentation of insurance business to regulators and misrepresentation of insurance business finances.
Lindberg, 53, faces a federal retrial in the fall on charges of attempting to bribe the North Carolina insurance commissioner to obtain preferential treatment for his insurance business. Prior to the 2019 indictment, Lindberg had given millions of dollars to candidate and party committees and independent spending groups in North Carolina.
An appeals court last June overturned those 2020 corruption-related convictions, and shortly thereafter he was released from an Alabama prison where he had been serving a seven-year sentence. With the latest indictment, an arrest warrant was issued for Lindberg on Thursday.
A Lindberg spokesman called the government’s recent indictments “piling up” because it has a weak case against Lindberg at the retrial. A panel of the Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge erred in giving misleading instructions to the jury at Lindberg’s trial before they began deliberations.
According to prosecutors and the most recent indictment, Lindberg and others agreed to defraud insurance companies, other third parties, and policyholders from no later than 2016 to at least 2019. In 2017-18, Lindberg and his co-conspirators used loans and related transactions to skim “hundreds of millions of dollars” from its insurance companies to buy and operate other Lindberg businesses, according to the indictment.
Lindberg deceived the state Department of Insurance and other regulators and misused insurance company funds for personal gain, the government alleges. According to a U.S. Department of Justice release, Lindberg reportedly benefited personally by using company money to fund “his lavish lifestyle” through real estate purchases and forgiving himself over $125 million in loans from his affiliates .
Lindberg spokeswoman Susan Estrich said: “The latest indictments stem from government spending over five years reviewing over 7 million documents relating to literally thousands of complicated financial transactions involving over 900 companies and hand-picking alleged technical breaches affecting policyholders in have done no harm to North Carolina or any other state for that matter.”
Estrich also provided a statement from Lindberg, who said, “I’ve invested over $500 million in my insurance businesses. I’ve never taken a dime in dividends. The claim that I somehow cheated them while investing $500 million in them and not taking any dividends is utterly absurd.”
Last August, the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Lindberg, a partner and his investment advisory firm, for defrauding clients of over $75 million through complex systems involving undisclosed transactions.
And in December, that employee – identified as Christopher Herwig – pleaded guilty in federal courts in Charlotte to conspiring to defraud the United States in connection with a scheme to transfer funds between insurance companies and other companies owned by Lindberg.
Herwig will be identified as one of the two co-conspirators in the indictment against Lindberg this week. The other alleged co-conspirator – identified as Devin Solow – had been formally charged with the conspiracy by federal prosecutors in a white paper unsealed last month. But Solow’s attorney and King’s office also wrote that the government and Solow had reached a deferred prosecution agreement that would see the bill dismissed in five years if Solow honors the agreement, which includes a promise to work with prosecutors.
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