Many news sources are reporting on the conviction this week of A&O Life co-founder Christian Allmendinger in connection with A&O’s fraudulent investment scheme. Here is CBS Moneyline’s article.
Allmendinger will be sentenced on August 12 and faces 22 to 27 years in prison. Investors lost $80- $100 million in the scheme. As reported on Corrections.com:
According to court records and evidence at trial, Allmendinger was a co-founder and vice president of A&O and was active in the day-to-day management of the companies, as well as in the marketing of A&O life settlement investment products to investors. He and others engaged in a scheme to defraud investors by making misrepresentations about such things as A&O’s prior success, its size and office locations, its number of employees, the risks of its investment offerings, and its safekeeping and use of investor funds. Evidence at trial showed that Allmendinger routinely used investor funds for personal enrichment, including a $2 million home, a Lamborghini Spyder, and a 15-carat diamond ring, among other property.
When state regulators began to scrutinize A&O’s investment products, Allmendinger and his co-conspirators decided to sell A&O in August 2007, which ended Allmendinger’s association with the fraud scheme. The indictment alleges that, through a series of sham sales, co-conspirators, including Abdulwahab and David White, continued the fraud scheme through September 2009.
Five individuals have pleaded guilty in connection with the A&O fraud scheme: White, the former President of A&O; Brent Oncale, former vice president of A&O; Russell E. Mackert, an attorney for A&O; Eric M. Kurz, a wholesaler of A&O investment products; and Tomme Bromseth, an A&O sales agent in the Richmond area.
A&O ringleader Adley Abdulwahab’s trial is scheduled for July 5.
I first started blogging about A&O back in 2009 when this blog had far fewer readers than it does now. In fact, back then most of my readers were outside of Mississippi and reading the blog for A&O information. In this May 2009 post I theorized that the sale of A&O was bogus and that Wahab still ran the company.
Wahab’s Houston attorney threatened me with a defamation lawsuit and inurance agents from across the country called to tell me that my suspicions about A&O were wrong. it turns out that at the time A&O was still stealing investor’s money.
Read all my A&O related posts here.