DALLAS (CN) - A 76-year-old insurance man was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for stealing from his business's employee benefit fund and then brazenly running a Ponzi scheme while awaiting trial.
Robert Hague-Rogers, of Frisco, also was ordered to pay $9.34 million in restitution, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Hague-Rogers pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to commit theft or embezzlement from an employee benefit plan and conspiracy to commit health-care fraud.
Hague-Rogers owned and operated Dallas-based HR Financial Services and HR Sales and Marketing from January 2001 to April 2011, and was an ERISA-based fund's trustee.
He was indicted in February 2011, accused of making transfers and cash withdrawals from the fund for himself and his family. Prosecutors said he also directed preparation of documents that tried to legitimize the transfers.
Two months later, prosecutors said, they learned he was running a Ponzi scam while on pre-trial release.
That scheme made unauthorized loans against employer-sponsored health plans to repay investors holding promissory notes with interest rates as high as 15 percent.
"He would then move funds between the various plans and investors' accounts, while paying himself and his family for personal expenses such as mortgages, life insurance policies and property taxes," prosecutors said in a statement.
"On April 18, 2011, the government obtained an injunction preventing Hague-Rogers and his companies from the further commission of any crimes, barring him from the sale of insurance and related products and freezing all assets and property owned by Hague-Rogers or his family."
A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment based on his pre-trial scheme, charging Hague-Rogers with several counts of health-care and wire fraud.
Hague-Rogers admitted he ran both conspiracies by creating numerous single-employer trusts to provide people with whole life insurance, death benefits and other post-retirement medical benefits, according to the factual resume.
"Hague-Rogers and others, without the knowledge and/or consent of the trusts, caused fraudulent and unauthorized loans to be made against the whole-life policies," prosecutors said. "He and his immediate family used the funds for personal expenses including leases of luxury vehicles, house payments and taxes, and private life insurance policies."
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