An ex-life insurance adviser has been blacklisted from the industry after he fraudulently made about $650,000 in commissions.
The former agent, Paul Bradbeer, filed over 100 fake client applications under bogus names. For his scheme, he was fined $10,000 by the Insurance Council of BC last week – on top of being banned from the practice, CBC News reported.
Bradbeer’s former employer, Foresters Financial, had previously filed a lawsuit against the former adviser over the fraud. The company took Bradbeer to BC Supreme Court to recoup the commission it paid him, as well as for special damages; that case was settled out of court in January 2017.
The latest penalties follow an investigation the council conducted on him.
The investigation found that Bradbeer filed the fake applications in 2015 and 2016, though Foresters claimed that the scheme began as far back as 2010.
Investigators found that Bradbeer had used some of the money he fraudulently obtained to make monthly premium payments on the fake accounts to keep the ruse going.
“Council found the former licensee’s actions were financially motivated and he put his interests before everything else,” the Insurance Council of BC’s discipline order read.
