Does Aish Ha Torah need to separate itself from Richard Horowitz and Marc Firestone? Does Adas Torah need to separate itself from its founder Mike Horowitz?
I am not urging any of these actions. I’m just wondering about the implications of last week’s revelations.
I can’t see Aish HaTorah Los Angeles doing anything against Richard Horowitz if Horowitz owns their building and built their organization in North America.
The typical Orthodox response to these types of allegations of white collar crime is to rally around the accused.
Some people in the Los Angeles Orthodox community have known about this scam for more than four years. They’ve known terminally ill people being ripped off. They’ve been waiting for this shoe to drop. They are happy that some justice is being dealt to predators.
Many people I know donate to Bikur Cholim but they don’t want to support an organization that uses confidential medical information to illegally make a buck.
Y. emails:
Luke,
I read about the Horowitz/Firestone scandal on your site and on Failed Messiah. I think you both missed a key link in the case, and I will send it to you, because your addendum that mentioned “Rabbi Hershy Ten” made the whole thing click for me. Besides, you’re local, and you always give me a nice hello on Pico Boulevard even though we’re not acquainted.
First, one of the perpetrators in this case was a certain Harold Ten, who identified terminally ill patients to the scammers. One wonders what position one must be in to identify terminally ill patients. You can easily Google his name and link to his Facebook page, and see that he owns some company called Tenco IMI. Ha-ha, very catchy. Note the photo.
Now Google Rabbi Hershy Ten, and look at his Facebook page. Same photo. Could they be twins? No, no Jewish parent names twin boys Harold and Hershy; Hershy is a common Yiddish pairing of Harold, and goes with the Hebrew name Tzvi (deer).
And who is Rabbi Hershy Ten? He is the director of Bikur Cholim — the Jewish organization that helps sick people. In other words, the director of a religious organization that helps sick people identified terminally ill patients to his benefactors so that they can make more money and share some of the proceeds with him.
This is far worse, in my opinion, that what the scammers did. Yes, they’re high-profile members of the Orthodox community; Firestone in particular was the exemplar of the sincere and successful ba’al t’shuva. But they’re business people. Ten is a rabbi.
Charles posts to Failed Messiah:
If I understand this right, the fraud was perpetrated against the insurance companies writing the variable annuities, _not_ against the old, sick patients.
What the SEC doesn’t specify is whether Aish haTorah was one of the “institutional investors” who participated in the fraud. And whether Aish _knew_ it was a fraud.
PS — there’s a lesson here:
. . . If you defraud an insurance company,
. . . it will be unhappy.
. . . And it will have the resources to
. . . chase you down.
WASHINGTON – U.S. securities regulators filed civil charges against two brokers and seven others, saying they were involved in a scheme to profit from the death of terminally ill patients through variable annuity sales.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s complaint, filed on Thursday as an administrative action, says Los Angeles-based broker Michael Horowitz, 39, was the mastermind behind the scheme to exploit people nearing their death.
Variable annuities are investment vehicles designed to help retirees maintain a source of income.
Typically, insurance companies who sell the annuities will agree to make periodic payments to people who purchase the product.
But another common feature offered is a death benefit, in which the insurer pays the policyholder’s beneficiary under certain conditions.
According to the SEC, Horowitz recruited people to help him steal personal health information from hospice and nursing home patients so he could designate them as annuitants and sell the products to wealthy investors.
The SEC said that at least 16 terminally ill hospice patients who were designated as annuitants had no family or business relationships with the investors who ultimately bought the products.
Among the people he recruited was another broker, Moshe Marc Cohen, 38, of Brooklyn, New York, the SEC said.
Together, they falsified a variety of documents, including forms designed to help determine if certain investments are suitable for customers, the SEC said.
As a result, the SEC said, insurance companies “unwittingly issued variable annuities that they would not otherwise have sold”.
Later, the SEC said, Horowitz moved on from just selling to individual investors and pitched the products to institutional investors as well in the hopes of boosting profits.
All told, the SEC said, the scheme led to the purchase and sale of $80 million in deferred variable annuities between 2007 and 2008, with Horowitz reaping $300,000 in commissions and Cohen getting $700,000…
Lawyers for Horowitz and Cohen could not be immediately reached for comment. The SEC said the two were fighting the charges.
The remaining defendants, including one investment advisory firm, all settled without admitting or denying the allegations, and will collectively pay $4.5 million.
