Pacific Life, Agent Face Suit Over $500K Payment That Vanished
The client asserts that bad wiring information caused him to transfer cash to cybercriminals.
Criminals who pretended to be Pacific Life executives fooled an agent into causing an applicant to send them a $500,000 payment, according to a new lawsuit.
The plaintiff, William Machin, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Machin alleges that the agent, Osvaldo Morales, and Morales’ firm, WealthUSA, were negligent and breached their fiduciary duty to him when they failed to verify the accuracy of the wiring instructions they gave him.
Machin has also accused Pacific Life of breaching its fiduciary duty to him by failing to make sure he had valid, accurate wiring information before he started the wire transfer.
Machin and WealthUSA did not respond to a request for comment. Pacific Life said through a representative that it does not comment on pending legal matters.
The applicant: Machin was preparing to apply for a Pacific Horizon ECV IUL indexed universal life insurance policy from Pacific Life in March, according to copies of the application, a policy illustration and premium financing information filed in an exhibit along with the complaint.
Machin was living in Miami Lakes, Florida, at the time. He was a 49-year-old smoker and the president of a construction firm.
He was applying for $5 million in basic coverage and $5 million in annual renewable term coverage.
The policy purchase process: Machin signed the application in the spring.
In July, Morales and WealthUSA gave him instructions about how to send Pacific Life a $500,000 payment.
Around Aug. 1, Morales and WealthUSA confirmed that Pacific Life had received the payment.
When Machin asked about policy paperwork in September, Morales and WealthUSA called Pacific Life and discovered that Pacific Life had never received the payment, Machin says in the complaint.
Morales and WealthUSA admitted that they “appeared to have been the victims of cyber hacking,” according to the complaint.
An investigation showed that Morales and WealthUSA had been communicating with people who identified themselves as Adrienne Mouch and Diane Nygard, called themselves Pacific Life executives, and had email addresses ending in PacificCife.com, rather than PacificLife.com, Machin alleges.
Machin asserts that Morales, WealthUSA and Pacific Life knew about cyberattacks and “phishing” schemes, or efforts to get people’s information and impersonate them, and should have done more to protect him.
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