Estate Planner and Ex-Employee to Pay $46.3 mil in Restitution for Scheme Exploiting the Terminally Ill

A federal judge ruled Monday that estate planner Joseph A. Caramadre and his former employee must pay $46.3 million in restitution related to an investment scheme exploiting the terminally ill.

Chief U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith upheld Magistrate Judge Patricia A. Sullivan's recommendation that Caramadre and Raymour Radhakrishnan owe $46-plus million to insurance companies and bond issuers defrauded under the scheme.

Smith in December sentenced Caramadre, a once political donor and philanthropist, to six years in prison for his role as mastermind of the investment strategy that used the identities of dying people to purchase investments for his clients. Radhakrishnan received a year and a day in prison.

Smith held off, however, in determining the amount of restitution the two men owed.

In accepting Sullivan's recommendations, Smith found that Caramadre and Radhakrishan were not equally culpable for the $46 million in losses the companies sustained from the inception of the criminal conspiracy in 1995.

Radhakrishnan participated from 2007 through the scheme's end in 2010, he found. During that time, the companies suffered $33.2 million in losses, he said.

"Radhakrishnan served a vital role during this time period," Smith wrote. "Indeed, to the terminally ill people taken advantage of, he was the personification of the Caramadre enterprise."

"Caramadre may aptly be described as the mastermind of the conspiracy at issue in this case," Smith wrote.

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Federal Judge Orders Estate Planner Caramadre, Ex-Employee to Pay $46.3 Million

See Also:
Death Takes a Policy; How a Lawyer Exploited the Fine Print and Found Himself Facing Federal Charges