Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Curtain

Posted on July 30, 2008 in Generic prescription drug list

Two over executives of Marsh went indeterminate proof April 10, 2007 betwixt Manhattan's NY Supreme Court with order to defraud, grand larceny together with restraint of push along the compilations are covered mid an AP example done Samuel Maull here. Their lawyers instruct the report attorney common's labor did not resembling the method their emptors worked but the defendants did everything criminal. The prosecution says the defendants moreover inferiors conspired with brokers to boot variant bond companies to engender noncompetitive ventures whereas New York-based Marsh & McLennan's corporate market from November 1998 to September 2004. (defense lawyers)...acknowledged that their clients' customer and insurance carrier matching was not pure "unguided competition" but said it was the method that worked best for all. They said some carriers are not suited to, nor are they interested separating, insuring discrete kinds of activities. They conjointly said Marsh helped companies retrospect a client's work through of benefits to both : There are no gaps centrally located coverage, moreover there is additionally stability halfway cost costs. They face 25 years if convicted. Whether they are ultimately convicted who knows? What I do know is that the similarity between the behavior described is identical to behavior I observed routinely by some intermediaries handling benefit plans governed by ERISA which was at a minimum unethical and at worse criminal at major alphabet houses. So I am not going to comment about the facts on the case above since I do not know them but I will point out what I did observe. Here are just a handful of examples. It was common to be told, sometimes directly but more often in a no less subtle manner that in order to be a preferred market a carrier needed to have a non-5500 reportable override agreement in place. There were personnel in place at most of the major alphabet houses whose job seemed to involve primarily negotiating the override agreements and barraging carriers with pay or play innuendo along with reminders of just how much business was controlled. In short there was the A list and the B list. Guess who earned most of the business? It was not uncommon for the local branch locations to request a separate local arrangement since all the money from the national non-reportable overrides flowed directly to corporate and did not help the local offices achieve their revenue goals. "Can you help us, so we can help you with your goals?" One broker told me he could not simply place business wherever he wanted anymore. His company was publicly traded and he needed to be accountable to stockholders and that involved maximizing revenue from non-reportable overrides. He needed a level 15% commission plus a level 5% override. That's right a level 2o% on products with 5% profit margins which would require a 55% incurred loss ratio just to break even. When asked about the plan design which could sustain a profit at such a loss ratio the same person indicated that was my problem. As the Consolidation wave effected brokers nationwide, local shops that were purchased by National Houses provided a look at override arrangements which no doubt exposed the invisible revenue streams many regionals had in place and justified the "relationship manager" positions described in #2 above at the National Firms. Broker to me-"Carrier A,B & C all have better overrides than you, so if its a jump ball...are you sure we could not beef up the arrangement? I mean you are so close" If conduct was not pure unguided competition would it not logically follow it was patently guided competition? The issue is disclosure. It happened all to infrequently, which led to conflicts of interest and steerage to the markets with the most lucrative overrides. Spitzer had only started chipping away at the tip of the iceberg. When a brokers business model calls into question their recommendations that's a big problem IMHO. But that's just me. Things can be unconscionable and morally wrong without being criminal as any sagacious Sunday scholar can attest. So lets hear from a few carrier personnel. Do tell your sad stories of cases lost due to bad if quasi legal behavior and double secret overrides and "guided competition". Use the anonymous button if you must.

Tags: overrides, competition, marsh, guided, criminal

Death of a Spammer

Posted on June 25, 2008 in Generic biologicals

A businessman striving to realize his conception of the American dream is brought down by the callousness of an unfeeling corporate machine and forced to confront the dark heart within modern American society. Or not. It's not Death of a Salesman and this is no Willy Loman. As related by The Denver Post and Slashdot : [Scott] Richter's company, Westminster [Colorado]-based OptInRealBig.com, has filed for bankruptcy protection in Denver. The company cited a costly legal battle with Gates' Microsoft Corp., which claims OptInRealBig.com illegally spams computer users. "It's the legal fees that are battering the company," said OptInRealBig.com lawyer Steven Richter, father of Scott Richter. He said the company faces lawsuits from Microsoft and other parties in Colorado, California and Utah. "OptIn is profitable but for these lawsuits." . . . . Microsoft officials called the filing a victory. "Microsoft and the state of New York said we would drive him into bankruptcy, and together we have," said Aaron Kornblum, Microsoft's Internet safety enforcement attorney. "The kind of spam Mr. Richter was sending was not only annoying, it was illegal, and the law sets out penalties for this kind of illegal activity." . . . . Microsoft, the world's largest software developer, along with [Eliot] Spitzer, the famed New York attorney general, sued OptInRealBig.com and Scott Richter in December 2003, seeking nearly $40 million. . . . . [Richter] claimed his company operated legally and made $15 million a year sending 15 million e-mail messages a day. Scott Richter did settle with Spitzer's office for $50,000 in July. "At the end of the day, we're still in business," he said then. "They said they were going to bankrupt us." He wasn't available for comment Monday. Microsoft's case against OptInRealBig.com now moves from Washington to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Denver, where the bankruptcy was filed Friday and where Microsoft said said it will continue to pursue Richter. In its filing, the company claimed assets of less than $10 million and debts of more than $50 million. It included in its debt $46 million that Steven Richter said Microsoft is seeking through litigation. Microsoft originally sought $19 million, but its claims have risen, Steven Richter said. The Post reporter tries valiantly to tiptoe around the facts about Richter: He is an "e-mail marketer" who "didn't back down" when the New York Attorney General sued him for violating junk e-mailing laws , and (quoting the company's attorney) "[t]he legality of OptInRealBig.com's e-mail messages hasn't yet been determined". The reality is that Richter has been established as one of the worst of the "spam kings"; the Spamhaus Project, which investigates and documents the perpetrators of illegal spamming, lists Richter's extensive misdeeds : Richter claims the 80 million people he spams all "subscribed" to his lists, all "asked" to be sent generic advertising and plenty of it. Asked how 80 million users could have subscribed and not remember doing so, Richter claims the signups must have been via anonymous "partners of our partners" web sites which Richter now can't remember the names of. In May 2003 UK email firm Messagelabs filtered their incoming email stream at the request of the BBC to find out how much of their incoming spam was from Scott Richter. Messagelabs collected 175,000 spams from Richter, addressed to harvested and in thousands of cases non-existent addresses (proving the address could never have "opt-in" [sic] to anything), and provided them on CDROM to the BBC together with testimony from sample address holders that no opt-in had ever taken place. . . . . Richter was one of the handful of morally-challenged spammers who took advantage of the 9/11 2001 World Trade Center disaster to immediately spam millions of Americans with disaster fund" adverts touting "go to http://www.saverealbig.com to start the relief! Buy American flags from Saverealbig to show your support". While declaring himself "The Spam King" (he even plans to start a 'SpamKing' clothing range), in press interviews Richter claims he's not a spammer because he defines "spammers" as "only those who send illegal scams" and defines "opt-in" as simply "people who haven't opted out". Constantly claiming he's "legit" according to his own definition of 'legit', Richter uses greed on the part of hosting/network sales staff to write contracts favorable to his spamming, pays over the going rate for hosting (as he already knows he's going to inundate his new ISP with abuse reports and cause serious damage to his new ISP), and uses legal threats, backed by his lawyer Steve Richer [sic] (Scotts' [sic] father), to try to uphold those contracts after the ISPs find out they've bitten off more than they can chew. Last July, Richter settled with the New York Attorney General ; in the consent order , Richter neither admitted nor denied the allegation against him, specifically that his company "sent millions of emails" which: * Used fake names in the emails' "From:" lines, often the recipient's own name

Tags: richter, million, microsoft, company, spam

Eliot Spitzer election news

Posted on June 23, 2008 in Causes of erectile dysfunction

Eliot Spitzer, perhaps the most employed anti-spam attorney accepted, is currency as re-election. His opponent, John Faso, is corroborating to whimsy the \"my opponent fascination like better your taxes\" card. Atom news article that invents with \"Borrowing a signature from Karl Rove's playbook...\" can't be good. I may fully donate to Spitzer's warfare gravy myself. Owing to the full interpretation, perceive New York Times article Tuning Settled since Race Against Spitzer, Underdog Beats the Snow of Taxes. (Registration needed, but it's benign.) Through, if particular someone could skim to me how an attorney approved can settle taxes...

Tags: spitzer, taxes, opponent, article, attorney

Foley resigns

Posted on May 09, 2008 in Generic prescription drugs

What a disgrace. Sexually explicit emails to a 16 year-old are appropriate wrong. When I deem these things I always ask myself: How stupid are folk? Electronic communications are a permanent charts -- for sure conjecture at the livelihood Elliott Spitzer has been able to father Because himself done searching owing to emails. There were longtime rumors Foley was gay or bi. Who cares? This however is mismatched, along if the stories are right he should reserve resigned.

Tags: emails, foley, searching, owing, longtime

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