Is Eduardo Rosendi dead or alive? That’s a $26 million question for two of the world’s largest insurance companies, a question they will put before a federal jury in Houston next week.
“It’s the most interesting trial I have ever been involved in,” said Mikal C. Watts of San Antonio, a storied plaintiffs’ attorney representing Blanca Monica Villareal, Rosendi’s supposed widow. She claims she’s entitled to collect on two term life-insurance policies Rosendi purchased in 2014, one for $10 million from Transamerica Corp. and one for $16 million from Pruco Life Insurance Co., a subsidiary of Prudential Financial. Villareal is the primary beneficiary on both policies.
Transamerica and Pruco have refused to pay Villareal, raising numerous questions about her claim, foremost among them whether Rosendi is even dead. The two sides sued one another and will present their widely dissimilar accounts to a jury in the court of U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal beginning Monday.
In addition to Watts, Villareal is represented by Francisco Guerra IV and Shalimar S. Wallis, both from Watts’s firm, Watts Guerra.
Originally, Pruco and Transamerica filed separate but nearly identical lawsuits against Villareal, who in turn filed counterclaims against the insurance companies. The cases have been consolidated for Monday’s trial.
The insurance companies are represented by, among others, Jason R. Bernhardt, J. David Brown and James Ruiz of Winstead and James Doyle, Ronald J. Restrepo and Christopher N. Hackerman of Doyle, Restrepo, Harvin & Robbins.
Lawyers for the insurers claim in court documents that almost nothing Rosendi told the companies when he applied for and was issued the insurance policies in 2014 was true, according to the findings of a private investigative firm, Diligence International Group, headquartered in Carrollton, Texas. Moreover, they claim evidence exists that Rosendi’s 2016 death was faked.
The insurance companies allege Rosendi lied when he presented himself as a high-tech CEO with an annual salary of $1.8 million and a net worth of $70 million and that a financial statement he submitted to support his application for the large policies was baloney.
They further contend that myriad questions surround his supposed death in Mexico City four days after Christmas in 2016, and his supposed cremation. Not the least of those questions is how a witness in Mexico City claimed to have seen Rosendi alive (and decidedly not cremated) more than a year after Villareal reported that her partner had breathed his last.
Among the suspicious findings, the insurance companies allege, are that:
- The Mexican government has no record of Rosendi’s being CEO of a tech company, Interactive Four, as he claimed. Interactive Four, according to court documents, “is a shell company with no assets, virtual offices, and insufficient income and cash flow to support the income and net worth claim by Rosendi.”
- Rosendi, rather than being a multimillionaire, held various low-wage jobs in Mexico, earning the equivalent in pesos of $10 to $12 a day.
- Despite Rosendi’s claiming to own real estate valued at more than $38 million, private investigators “could not find a single property in Mexico” that he owned.
- At the time of his purported death, he and Villareal were living in a rented house with rented furniture in Mexico City, where his liquid assets totaled 300,000 pesos (about $14,500, based on exchange rates then).
- His only U.S. bank account was a checking account opened in Las Vegas with an initial deposit of $475 – an account used almost exclusively to make premium payments on the two insurance policies.
- The person who certified Rosendi’s written financial statement was not, as purported, a licensed accountant; he was Rosendi’s former brother-in-law, who told investigators “he had not seen Rosendi for more than 20 years, did not know anything about Rosendi’s finances, and signed the financial statement simply because a different brother-in-law asked him to.”
- The Mexico City doctor who certified Rosendi’s death “changed his story multiple times” regarding the circumstances of the supposed death.
- The funeral home where Rosendi’s body was supposedly embalmed before cremation – “and before any medical examination could be conducted” – had been vacated six months earlier than the cremation.
- A different funeral home where a wake for Rosendi supposedly took place “could not provide Diligence with any documentation of any services related to the supposed wake.” Furthermore, “different accounts were provided as to whether Rosendi’s supposed wake had a closed casket or involved an urn.”
- Villareal, who married Rosendi just two months before his supposed death, could tell investigators little about his background. “For example,” one court filing said, “Villareal said she did not know any of Rosendi’s family members or even if he had any family members, whether he had been married before, whether he had any children, or where he lived before. …” She also claimed to know nothing about his finances, bank accounts, investments or holdings, other than that he owned two vehicles.
- An office worker in Mexico City told an investigator she saw Rosendi alive in March 2018, 15 months after his purported death.
Watts, Villareal’s attorney, claimed in court documents that Transamerica and Pruco based their seemingly damning – but erroneous – conclusions on private investigators’ reports that were incomplete, superficial and skewed to tell the insurers what they wanted to hear. He said he was confident he would persuade jurors that, first, Rosendi did indeed cross the river Styx and, second, that Villareal is fully entitled to cash in the $26 million in insurance policies.
Noting that a fifth of Diligence International’s business comes from Pruco and Transamerica, Watts wrote that a “cozy relationship” exists between the investigative firm and the insurance giants.
“The effort by Diligence was simply to develop a report that would justify denial of the claim,” he wrote. “The investigators understood that their task was to find bases for denying the claims to save the insurer-clients millions of dollars.”
Both sides said they were eager to present their versions of the tale to jurors.
“I’m very much looking forward to this trial,” Watts told The Texas Lawbook. “Judge Rosenthal is an outstanding judge, and my client is pleased to be getting her day in court.”
Bernhardt, of the insurers’ team, said every bogus insurance claim that’s paid costs other policyholders money by increasing premiums.
“Our clients have an obligation to their policyholders to ensure the validity of every claim that’s submitted,” he said. “We’re looking forward to the opportunity to present our case to a jury.”
The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.