76-year-old Texas insurance agent gets 15 years for fraud

A 76-year-old Texas insurance agent facing nearly a century behind bars for selling faux annuities to elderly investors will spend up to 15 years in the slammer. John F. Langford of Amarillo, Texas, was sentenced Sept. 12 in the 181st state District Court after pleading guilty to 15 counts of securities fraud and other charges. Authorities said he stole close to $7 million from dozens of clients through the sale of phony “private annuities” and promissory notes that promised interest rates as high as 9%, according to the Texas State Securities Board. Mr. Langford was sentenced to seven 15-year terms for the fraudulent sale of securities and eight 10-year terms for selling unregistered securities and selling without being registered. He will serve the time concurrently. The case goes back to about three years ago, when Texas securities regulators began investigating Mr. Langford and a business partner. The pair came under suspicion after the guardian of an elderly woman sued them, claiming that the victim had been persuaded to invest $941,756 in nine “private annuities.” A court later ruled that the woman was incompetent due to dementia. Angry investors who bought private annuities and promissory notes have filed claims in bankruptcy court against Mr. Langford, who filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in 2009. The ill-gotten gains allegedly were used for personal purchases and to pay off other investors who bought the phony products, clients alleged. In one of the cases, filed by Hazel Carter, a guardian for investor Ruth Alice Roach-Worak, the client was over 80 when she put close to $950,000 into a handful of fraudulent annuities between 2004 and 2006. Many of the fake annuities weren't going to come due for 10 years, at which point Ms. Roach-Worak would have been in her 90s, according to the complaint. A judge later ruled that she was incompetent to have made the decision. A call to Tim Pirtle, Mr. Langford's attorney, was not immediately returned.