Former Vanguard President Sentenced for Embezzlement, Fraud
March 09, 2013
Sarasota, FL - Dwayne Samuels, the former president of Vanguard Asset Group, Inc., (Lake Success, NY) was sentenced on January 25, 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York to three years in prison, to be followed by three years' probation. He was also ordered to make restitution of $250,000, the U.S. Department of Labor confirmed in a March 2013 EBSA Fact Sheet for the case of United States v. Dwayne Samuels.
In May 2012, Samuels had entered a guilty plea to one count of embezzlement in connection with a health care benefit program (18 U.S.C. § 669) and one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1347).
A federal grand jury had indicted Samuels in 2005 for the embezzlement of premium payments that had been paid to Vanguard for health care coverage and for devising a scheme to defraud clients, including members of WEVA, beginning in 2001. Cease-and-desist orders were issued against Vanguard by state insurance regulators in 2002, a time when undetected schemes had begun to proliferate.
According to the Department of Labor, Samuels falsely represented to several client plans that Vanguard had availed itself of stop-loss insurance to cover large medical claims. Following the 2005 federal indictment, Samuels was rearrested in 2011 on mortgage fraud charges.
The case of United States v. Dwayne Samuels was investigated by the New York Regional Office of the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) and the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Labor. The case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York.
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