Former California life insurance agents Mohammed Kakooza, Margret Birabwa, Michael Chibueze Monday, and Denis Osikol, all from the Southland area, have been charged in an alleged $1.9 million fraud for allegedly submitting fraudulent life insurance applications to score advance commissions from insurance companies.
According to the California Department of Insurance, between May 2013 and July 2017, Mr. Osikol and Mr. Monday submitted more than 600 fraudulent life insurance applications to multiple insurance companies and collected nearly $2 million in commissions they should have never received.
Prosecutors said that their investigation revealed that over $1.2 million was deposited into a bank account owned by Ms. Birabwa, nearly $700,000 deposited into bank accounts owned by Mr. Kakooza, and over $12,000 deposited into a bank account owned by Mr. Osikol. The government said that although Ms. Birabwa and Mr. Kakooza received the majority of the commissions issued by the insurance carriers from the fraudulent applications, Mr. Monday and Mr. Osikol received money directly from Mr. Kakooza and Ms. Birabwa.
To obtain personal identifying information for the fraudulent applications, investigators alleged that Mr. Kakooza set up a referral program and paid applicants between $25 to $50 for referring family members or friends to him for life insurance. As alleged, some applicants were told they were applying for life insurance policies and Mr. Kakooza would contact them with premium payment information, but some applicants never received follow-up phone calls and were unaware the life insurance policies they applied for were ever in force. In some cases, the government asserted, it appeared that multiple applications were submitted without the consumers' knowledge and contained forged signatures. The applications submitted to the insurance carriers also contained misrepresentations and fabricated information, including occupations, income, net worth, or beneficiary information, according to prosecutors.
The government also asserted that in some cases premium payments were not paid by the applicants, but instead were paid from accounts owned by Mr. Kakooza, Ms. Birabwa, or Mr. Osikol, or from accounts opened by other individuals who assisted them in carrying out their commission scheme.
According to the government, life insurance policy applications also were submitted by Ms. Birabwa, Mr. Osikol, and other formerly licensed life insurance agents who also were involved in similar advance commission schemes. Investigators alleged that the majority of the life insurance policies that were successfully processed and placed eventually lapsed due to non-payment of premiums.