HOUSTON – A woman who claims her husband died in Mexico City more than five years ago cannot collect $26 million from his life-insurance policies, a federal jury decided Wednesday.
The jury of seven men and five women took an hour to find in favor of Transamerica Corp. and Pruco Life Insurance Co., a subsidiary of Prudential Financial, and against Blanca Monica Villarreal, a native of León in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. The two sides sued one another after Villarreal submitted claims for the insurance money – a $10 million policy from Transamerica and a $16 million policy from Pruco – in early 2017 that the insurance companies refused to pay her.
Villarreal told the insurers her husband, Eduardo Rosendi, died of a heart attack on Dec. 29, 2016, and that his remains were cremated the next day. After dispatching private investigators to Mexico City, the insurance companies concluded that Rosendi had lied about his financial status to secure the policies and that Villarreal lied when she said her husband of three months had died.
The jury verdict concluded an eight-day trial before Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal.
Mikal C. Watts of Watts Guerra in San Antonio, Villarreal’s lawyer, said after the verdict was returned: “We appreciate the jury’s service. While we are disappointed in the verdict, we respect it, and congratulate our colleagues on the other side for their victory today.”
Transamerica and Pruco could not be reached for comment.
The insurance companies were represented at trial by, among others, Jason R. Bernhardt and Linda Burgess of Winstead and Laura Leigh Geist and Michael Duvall of Dentons.
Among the investigators’ findings that the insurers found suspicious:
- The Mexican government has no record of Rosendi’s being CEO of a tech company, Interactive Four, as he claimed on his applications for the policies.
- Rosendi, rather than being a multimillionaire as he claimed, held various low-wage jobs in Mexico, earning the equivalent in pesos of $10 to $12 dollars a day.
- Despite Rosendi’s claim to own real estate valued at more than $38 million, the investigators found no property in his name.
- 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 but 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.
- A different funeral home where a wake for Rosendi supposedly took place “could not provide [investigators] 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 she said he died, 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.
Watts contended that the investigation was never intended to get at the truth. Rather, he said, it was to give Transamerica and Pruco grounds to refuse to pay Villarreal.
“The whole purpose of the investigation … was to give them a gun with bullets,” he said in his closing argument. In addition to the $26 million he said his client was owed, Watts asked the jury to award Villarreal three to five times that amount – at least – in punitive damages.
The first two questions on the jury’s verdict form were whether Villarreal had proven that Rosendi died on Dec. 29, 2016, and whether the insurers had proven that Rosendi made misrepresentations in applying for the policies.
When the jury answered “No” to the first of those questions and “Yes” to the second, their work was done – and the insurance companies were victorious.