The president of a Costa Rican company that sold reinsurance bonds to life settlement companies was sentenced today in Richmond, Va., to 60 years in prison for carrying out a half-billion-dollar fraud scheme that affected more than 3,500 victims throughout the United States and abroad.
Minor Vargas Calvo, 61, a citizen and resident of Costa Rica, is the majority owner of Provident Capital Indemnity (PCI) Ltd., an insurance and reinsurance company registered in the Commonwealth of Dominica and doing business in Costa Rica. He was convicted on April 30, 2012, of one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud and three counts of money laundering.
From 2004 through 2010, PCI sold at least $485 million of bonds to life settlement investment companies located in various countries, including the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and elsewhere. PCI’s clients, in turn, sold investment offerings backed by PCI’s bonds to thousands of investors around the world. Purchasers of PCI’s bonds were required to pay up-front payments of six to 11 percent of the underlying settlement as “premium” payments to PCI before the company would issue the bonds.
Evidence at trial showed that Vargas spent more than $23 million of his ill-gotten gains on his professional soccer teams in Costa Rica, his unrelated companies, his family and himself. Due, in part, to these expenditures, when it came time to make good on PCI’s promises to pay bond holders, Vargas resorted to yet more lies to justify PCI’s inability to do so.
