HOUSTON — A retired federal agent who spent decades investigating transborder crimes testified that a Mexican woman’s attempt to collect $26 million from two giant U.S. insurance companies is an elaborate and flagrant scam.
“I could come to no other conclusion,” said Brian Moskowitz, a former special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Houston.
“To me, it’s just so obvious.”
His testimony began Monday, the opening day of a civil trial before Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal. and continued Tuesday afternoon. He was the first witness called by the two insurers withholding the $26 million payment, Transamerica Corp. and Pruco Life Insurance Co., a subsidiary of Prudential Financial.
The woman demanding payment of the $26 million (plus treble damages) is Blanca Monica Villarreal, 46, who claims to be the widow of a wealthy Mexican businessman named Eduardo Rosendi. Villarreal is the beneficiary on two life-insurance policies issued to Rosendi in 2014 — one for $10 million from Transamerica, one for $16 million from Pruco.
By the time she notified Transamerica and Pruco of the death and of her intention to claim the benefits provided under the policies, his remains had been cremated. So sketchy was her story, the insurers’ lawyers say, they doubt Rosendi is dead
The companies are refusing to pay Villarreal, claiming they were victims of a swindle that took years of planning by her, Rosendi and others in Mexico.
Her attorney, Mikal C. Watts of Watts Guerra in San Antonio, spent most of Tuesday afternoon cross-examining the retired agent. Watts punched at the thoroughness of Moskowitz’s analysis of the case, done as a paid expert for the insurers. Watts intimated that Moskowitz’s research wasn’t as comprehensive, and his conclusions weren’t as indisputable, as Moskowitz would have the jury of five women and seven men believe.
During three-plus hours of direct questioning by Michael Duvall, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Dentons and a member of the insurers’ team, Moskowitz recounted in detail — sometimes excruciating detail — what he said were fraudulent statements Rosendi made to exaggerate his wealth, which would qualify him for more term. coverage.
He further testified that Villarreal’s statements and actions around the time she claims Rosenda died, at the end of December 2016, were riddled with inconsistencies: That her version was contradicted by others interviewed in Mexico by private investigators working for the insurance companies and that she withheld information, destroyed pertinent records and instructed others not to cooperate in the inquiry.
Rosenthal said she thought the trial could wrap up by the end of next week.
In his 34-year law enforcement career, Moskowitz said, he conducted or supervised “thousands upon thousands” of criminal cases, first for the Internal Revenue Service, then for the U.S. Customs Service, which became Homeland Security Investigations under a reorganization of border-enforcement agencies after 9-11. He assured the jury he knows a fraud when he smells one — and he smells one here.
After reviewing the evidence in the case for 18 months— work for which the insurance companies have paid him more than $312,000 to date — he said he concluded unequivocally that Villarreal and Rosendi had lied, and that Transamerica and Pruco acted properly in denying her claims.
Moskowitz testified that Rosendi secured the policies by submitting phony financial statements with his applications. The statements identified him as the CEO of a lucrative software-development company in Mexico, with a yearly salary of $1.8 million, real-estate holdings of $32 million and a net worth of $70 million.
None of that was true, according to the two insurers: The software company was a shell, he wasn’t its CEO, and the only way his real-estate empire ran to seven figures was if all seven were zeroes. In 2016, Moskowitz testified, Rosendi was working as a low-level security aide to a thuggish con artist in Mexico City.
“That’s not something a $70 million man would do,” he said. “It just didn’t make sense.”
Villarreal and Rosendi were married two months before his supposed death, in October 2016. Opinions differ on whether the union was born of love, or a desire to create a paper trail showing they were husband and wife.
If it was love, it was not the undying kind. Villarreal told the insurance companies a heart attack killed her newlywed husband on Dec. 29. She added that his remains had been quickly cremated.
The companies sent private investigators to Mexico City to look into Villarreal’s claims, a common industry practice in cases involving a death in a foreign country.
The investigators said Villarreal’s story was riddled with inconsistencies, and contradicted by others they interviewed. They said the documents she offered as proof of Rosendi’s death and cremation were flimsy; that she withheld information from them and was found to have destroyed pertinent records; that she’d instructed others not to cooperate in the inquiry; and that she was unable or unwilling to answer even basic questions about Rosendi’s family background, his finances, or their wedding ceremony, just two months before she reported the death.
According to court filings by the insurers’ lawyers, when an investigator spoke with Villarreal after she entered her claim for the insurance money, she was unable or unwilling to answer even basic questions about Rosendi’s family, his background, or his finances.
The elemental question to be decided by the jury, the one on which everything else hinges, is whether Rosendi is alive or dead.
The insurers say alive. Villarreal says dead.
Logic, biology and the law say both cannot be true. Nonetheless, Watts assured jurors in his opening statement Monday that he’s identified six people who saw Rosendi’s corpse before it was cremated. And Laura Leigh Geist, a lawyer for the insurers. said just as assuredly in her opening statement that three people in Mexico City saw Rosendi walking and taking months after he supposedly had been returned to dust.
“Of all the evidence you will see in this case, you will not see a photo of Mr. Rosendi’s dead body. It doesn’t exist,” she said.
She added, “Eduardo Rosendi faked his life in order to fake his death to get the insurance money.”
Watts began his opening statement with a four-word response: “That’s quite a tale.”
Watts said Rosendi’s death couldn’t have come as a surprise to the insurance companies. He said they knew in 2014 — based on lab tests they ordered in connection with his insurance applications — that he was a heart attack waiting to happen. The lab tests, he said, revealed, among other health problems, evidence of liver damage, kidney damage, heart disease, diabetes and imbalances in his blood chemistry, all of which increase the risk of a fatal heart attack.
Moreover, he was 6 feet tall and weighed 270 pounds — medically classified as obese.
Yet they approved him for coverage anyway — and without asking too many questions, Watts said.
“They didn’t care,” he told the jurors. “They wanted the premiums.”
According to court documents, Rosendi paid $51,435 a year for the two policies, and he was good about paying on time.
“All of the telltale signs of a heart attack were right there,” he said.
But none of that mattered to the insurance companies, he said, because they didn’t think Villarreal would push back if they simply refused to pay her.
“They knew most widows in Mexico won’t contest the denial of their claims by these big insurance companies,” Watts said.
Standing inches from the end of the long wooden table where the insurance lawyers were seated, he glowered at them and said:
‘These two insurance companies were not going to pay these claims. They never intended to.”