Sholam Weiss – National Heritage Life Insurance
It took years to put him behind bars for looting a life insurance company. Then Trump let him go.
Sholam Weiss acquired a life insurance company with a kited check and looted $400 million from its policyholders.
How does something like this happen in what is supposed to be a highly regulated industry?
The New York Times called it, “a series of numbingly complex mortgage and stock frauds.” An easier explanation: Only in Florida.
Weiss was convicted in 2000 on 78 counts, including racketeering, wire fraud, money laundering and obstruction after a nine-month trial. But Weiss didn’t stick around to hear the verdict.
With piles of ill-gotten gains, he skipped town and rambled through Israel, Belgium, Brazil, Austria and the United Kingdom. Prosecutors said he dined at fine restaurants, gambled in casinos, stayed in high-end hotels and partied with prostitutes.
He was, for a time, one of the FBI’s most-wanted criminals.
A judge gave Weiss an 845-year prison sentence in absentia. It was the longest prison sentence ever handed down to a white-collar criminal. (Ponzi schemerBernie Maddoff, by contrast, only got 150 years.)
The convict was finally nabbed using a fake passport in Vienna, but with good lawyering, he stayed out of jail as he pursued a long extradition fight.
Authorities finally dragged him back to the U.S. to face his prison sentence in 2002.
Weiss didn’t do it alone. Federal prosecutors secured more than a dozen guilty pleas and convictions against lawyers, accountants, brokers and advisers who helped with the takeover and the looting of National Heritage Life Insurance.
The Orlando-based insurance company catered to modest-income customers whom Florida state regulators failed to protect.
Amazingly, Weiss and his co-conspirators bought the company by writing a bad check for $4 million, then they covered the check by taking out loans from the company.
Once inside, they systematically siphoned the company’s assets through sham transactions, bogus mortgage deals, fake investment vehicles and a network of shell companies that funneled money straight into their pockets.
The scheme drove the insurer into insolvency in 1994, leaving more than 25,000 policyholders holding the bag.
Regulators called it one of the worst insurance failures in U.S. history. So much for the company’s slogan: “Pillars of Strength and Character.”
Thousands of people who purchased annuities through the company lost their life savings. Many victims were elderly retirees who never recovered a dime.
“I hope they hang him,” 77-year-old Joseph Pleasant of Merritt Island, Fla., told the Orlando Sentinel in 2002. “I’m certainly happy they got him.”
For years, Weiss insisted he was a victim of prosecutorial overreach. But evidence showed he dictated the fraud down to its minute details, approving sham real estate deals, directing co-conspirators to falsify records, and manipulating the company’s books while masquerading as a savior investor. He lost his appeal in 2013.
You would think Weiss would be rotting in prison to this day. But in January 2021, Trump commuted his sentence, citing a roster of notable supporters, a celebrity attorney and Weiss’ health.
From the White House press release:
Shalom Weiss – President Trump commuted the sentence of Shalom Weiss. This commutation is supported by former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, former Solicitors General Ken Starr and Seth Waxman, former United States Representative Bob Barr, numerous members of the New York legislature, notable legal figures such as Professor Alan Dershowitz and Jay Sekulow, former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman, and various other former elected officials. Mr. Weiss was convicted of racketeering, wire fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice, for which he has already served over 18 years and paid substantial restitution. He is 66 years old and suffers from chronic health conditions.
Related Reading: Pardon My Ponzi (Business Blunders)
Two months after his release, Weiss suffered a stroke. But by January 2022, he was healthy enough to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago to thank him.
Weiss also remained proud enough to put out a press release on the meeting. It reads:
“Former President Donald J. Trump met with Shalom Weiss and his daughter, Mrs. Rivky Neuhaus, on Monday, January 10th, at Mar-a-Lago.
”Mr. Weiss and his daughter expressed their deep appreciation for the former President’s compassionate commutation of Mr. Weiss’s 845-year sentence to time served. Mrs. Neuhaus, who is an artist, presented the former President with a portrait she created of him at the Western Wall, the ancient holy site in Jerusalem, Israel.”
In the press release, Weiss did not include a single line expressing remorse or offering apologies to his victims. He did not even mention any kind of repentance in prison or grace from his god.
The pious fraudster now lives quietly, far from the retirees whose life savings he wiped out.