Former Ga. Insurance Commissioner’s Conviction Stands, but Tax Repay Has to Wait

Former Georgia Insurance Commissioner Jim Beck’s fraud conviction stands, but he won’t have to pay part of the restitution until after he’s released from prison, a federal appeals court decided Monday.

The U.S. 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals found no merit in Beck’s arguments that his 2021 conviction on fraud, money laundering and false tax returns should be overturned. But the court agreed with Beck’s attorneys and prosecutors who acknowledged that the lower court erred in requiring immediate restitution of $358,000 in back taxes.

Federal law provides that repayment of taxes can only be required as a condition of supervised release.

“Here, the district court’s order imposing the restitution to be paid immediately to the IRS was impermissible, as it was not a condition of supervised release,” interim Judge Harvey Schlesinger wrote in the Aug. 7 opinion. “We agree with both parties that the district court erred in doing so, and we vacate the district court’s decision on this point and remand for further proceedings.”

The IRS may have to wait a few years before seeing the money. Beck was sentenced in October 2021 to just over 7 years in prison and was ordered to pay the taxes and to repay $2.6 million that he embezzled from a homeowners’ insurance association before he was elected commissioner in 2018. Most of the restitution will go to Cincinnati Insurance Co., which repaid the association for the losses it incurred in Beck’s fraud.

Just weeks after Beck took office, he was indicted and was removed from the commissioner’s position by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.

Beck, who previously had worked as deputy insurance commissioner, for several years was manager of the Georgia Underwriting Association and was chief financial officer of the Georgia Arson Control Program. The underwriting association was created by state law to insure high-risk residential properties that could not find affordable coverage in the primary market.

Beck was found guilty of siphoning funds from the association by claiming that hired consultants were providing data research and other services, from 2013 to 2018. Prosecutors said many of those invoices were a front for payments that went to Beck’s personal accounts. He also used funds from the arson control program to purchase campaign signs for his run for commissioner, the court explained.

Investigators recorded phone calls in which Beck made incriminating statements, then searched his computers and emails. At sentencing, Beck also was ordered to forfeit cash and properties he owned in Georgia.

Topics Georgia