Investment advisor ordered to pay $1.6 million after 25 years of pension fund fraud
A Palm Beach County investment advisor, insurance salesman and now convicted felon just learned he owes $1.6 million in restitution to the nonprofit rehabilitation center pension plan he once ran.
Considering William Minor admitted to stealing about $2 million from The Rehabilitation Center for Children and Adults pension plan from 1991 to 2016, being told to pay back $1,636,604 might not be such a bad deal for Minor. The 70-year-old is occupied until Feb. 15, 2022, in federal prison in North Carolina, about an hour from property he owns, after pleading guilty to one count of mail fraud.
The Rehabilitation Center does physical, occupational and speech therapy on an outpatient basis. At some point in the early 1970s, Minor joined its Board of Governors as a volunteer member. The pension product and life insurance salesman helped set up The Center’s pension plan in 1976.
According to Minor’s admission of facts, he moved the plan’s account to Transamerica Life Insurance and Annuity, one of the companies that counted him as a registered agent. He told The Center’s pension plan trustees his own company, Multi Financial, would work with Transamerica to administer the pension plan.
But Transamerica wasn’t partnered with Multi Financial. And it didn’t administer the plan, but just held assets in a custodial account. When the plan’s trustee said to make a distribution, Transamerica made a distribution.
“Minor was the one who exercised complete control over RCCA’s pension plan and was responsible for the administration and management of the plan and the disposition of its assets,” Minor’s factual admission says.
Here’s how Minor used this license to steal:
“Between 1991 and 2016, Minor routinely submitted requests to Transamerica for distributions from the Pension Plan for specified former employees who were supposedly eligible for Iump sum pension benefit payments. These requests were fraudulent in that the specified former employees were not in fact vested in the plan, were only partially vested and not entitled to the benefits requested, or were vested, but had already received pension payments.”
Minor then got the plan trustee’s signature by lying to the trustee or, sometimes, just forging the trustee’s signature. He would tell Transamerica to send the pension checks to addresses under his name in Boynton Beach, Fernandina Beach and Yulee.
To solve the problem of cashing checks meant for someone else, Minor got Transamerica to make the checks out to “Trustee for the Rehabilitation.” Minor then told the trusting trustee to endorse the benefits checks to Multi Financial, saying Multi Financial would send the money to the former employees. He did this for 20 years, 1991 to 2011.
“Instead, he spent the fraudulently obtained pension plan monies on him self and his family,” his admission states.
Minor cut out the endorsing step in October 2011, opening a bank account at CBC National Bank in the name “Trustee for the Rehabilitation.” He created fake statements for auditors and pensioners.
FBI agents sat down with Minor in March 2017 to talk about the fraud.
“During the interview, Minor admitted that he had taken money from the pension plan since at Ieast 1988, when his wife became ill,” the admission of facts states. “At first, he used the stolen money to pay medical bills for his wife and himself, but later used the stolen money to pay rent, purchase vehicles and pay his expenses.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2019 at 2:46 PM.
