Litigation

In the immortal words of Carl Spackler  "I have to laugh"... at Settlement Professionals, Inc.

Someone at Settlement Professionals, Inc. decided to upgrade the company website and obviously the "lazy sods" thought they would save some time by pirating virtually the entire copyrighted code and text and design from the 4structures.com, LLC web page describing the markets that write structured settlement annuities, without permission. They scrubbed 4structures.com, LLC's disclaimer about Symetra (see below) but left in the double asterisks that lead to the disclaimer on the 4structures.com website and every abbreviation! Can you say "SNAGGED?"

Have a look! Can you tell the differences in the text? Ignore the poor text/row alignment job of the SPI webmaster.

Download setlement_professionals_inc_primary_structured_settlement_annuity_markets.pdf

Link to 4structures.com, LLC Primary structured settlement annuity markets available to structured settlement brokers and settlement planners

http://www.4structures.com/4structures/front/resources/template/resources_tools_annuity.jsp

The good thing for Settlement Professionals, Inc. is that as a result of its piracy there are now two structured settlement industry websites in compliance with New York State's insurance advertising rules which require the city and state of the home office of each insurer to be displayed.

The operative and a significant remaining question however, concerning Settlement Professionals Inc., stems from its leaving in the "double asterisks" but omitting the following text which appears on the 4structures.com, LLC website.

**Symetra is listed in the chart above for informational purposes only. 4structures.com, LLC has made a business decision not to place any structured settlement business with Symetra due to the manner of the business practices of its qualified assignee, Symetra Assigned Benefits Service Company, of which it has been documented, actively solicits annuitants (of contracts IT owns) to sell structured settlement payment rights to a Symetra subsidiary. This is against our business philosophy and what we expect of our vendors".

Click here for this author's public condemnation of Symetra business practices January 23, 2008.

Does its deliberate omission of the above text mean that Settlement Professionals. Inc. (1) condones the business practices of Symetra Assigned Benefits Service Company (2) places business with Symetra Life in spite of its prior knowledge of these business practices?

Settlement Professionals, Inc. co-founder and now proven hypocrite, Jack Meligan, spared no venom on June 23, 2006 in attacking this author for, in his opinion at the time, being too light on Symetra's factoring activities (and Allstate for its AFEN). Long time readers may recall this being quickly dispatched in The Water Buffaloes Or Oz?

Well... it's obvious now!

As recently as December 2007 the business practices of two members of Settlement Professionals, Inc , Oregon based co-founder Jack Meligan and Colorado based Michele Whitmore, included taking fees from factoring companies and Meligan (in collaboration with factoring broker Rhonda Bentzen of Bentzen Funding Solutions), made a serious but unsuccessful attempt to subvert efforts of this author to create the Structured Settlement Clean Vendor list.  At the time Bentzen admitted that 90% of her clients were taking commissions/fees in exchange for referring structured settlement factoring transactions to Bentzen.