Man convicted of fraud in insurance scam; He collected $507,000 in
Over 14 years, Kadaba Sreevatsan collected $507,000 in disability payments from the Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual Life insurance company, certifying again and again that he suffered from dementia so bad he couldn’t work, couldn’t manage his household and couldn’t read more than a page at a time without developing debilitating headaches.
During the same period, prosecutors say, Sreevatsan ran businesses that won contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense.
After a three-day trial, a federal jury on Monday convicted Sreevatsan, 62, of six counts of mail fraud, agreeing with Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew L. Jacobs’ contention that Sreevatsan was faking mental illness. Sreevatsan faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of $3 million when he is sentenced in November.
Sreevatsan, of Westbury, N.Y., bought a disability insurance policy from Northwestern Mutual in 1986 and started receiving payments of $3,000 a month two years later, according to court records. He submitted periodic forms to verify his continued eligibility for the money. Yet until at least 1994, his mom-and-pop machine shop was awarded about a dozen government contracts of between $10,000 and $100,000 each to produce small components for military equipment, Jacobs said.
Insurance officials became suspicious when they learned of two New York lawsuits regarding Sreevatsan’s wife’s car accident in September 1992, Jacobs said. In addition to suing the driver of the other car, the couple sued Equitable Life, another insurer, when it refused to pay disability benefits to Sreevatsan’s wife.
Northwestern Mutual hired a private investigator, who reviewed records in the lawsuits and records for Sreevatsan’s businesses, Tafal Associates and Devipu Technologies Inc., Jacobs said. The investigator also posed as a potential buyer for Sreevatsan’s car in February 2001.