Asian-Americans in Flushing were targeted by an insurance fraud ring that staged fake car accidents and filed phony medical claims under the state’s no-fault insurance law, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said yesterday in announcing the indictments of 61 people across the city.

The 19-month investigation by at least 100 city police officers and FBI agents came after police received a tip from an insurance investigator in March 2007 that there was a pattern of accidents along Northern and Parsons boulevards dating back to 2005, the district attorney said at a news conference in Kew Gardens.

In “Operation Direct Hit,” authorities also conducted surveillance in the Flushing area, listened in on telephone conversations between the alleged scammers and videotaped inside a Manhattan clinic where phony medical claims allegedly were filed, Brown said.

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Eve Mazzarella was a Las Vegas success story. The high-school dropout and former housemaid moved to the Nevada city in 2000 from Seattle, got a certificate from the ABC Real Estate School and started selling houses in what would become the hottest market in the country.

In 2006, Mazzarella recorded sales of $13.8 million and made the National Association of Realtors’ “30 Under 30” list, which names the best young agents in the nation. Mazzarella started her own company, Distinctive Real Estate & Investments Inc., in December 2003. She whipped around town in a Mercedes-Benz sport utility vehicle. She planned to build a three-story office building in Vegas’s shabby downtown north of the Strip and preserve a historic house on the site by lifting it onto the roof.

Her competitors were impressed. “She was an up and comer with a brilliant future,” says Forrest Barbee, a broker at Prudential Americana Group, a Las Vegas agency where Mazzarella once worked.

The dream ended at about 5 a.m. on March 13, when federal agents smashed through the door of a stucco home on a quiet, grassy cul-de-sac looking for Mazzarella, 31, and her husband, Steven Grimm, 45, an erstwhile mortgage broker.

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The Australian reverse mortgage market grew by 14 per cent in the six months to June 2008 (more than 27 per cent over the past 12 months) to be comprised of more than 36,000 loans with a total outstanding lending of $2.3 billion.

A study by Deloitte Actuaries and Consultants found there were 3,500 new loans (settlements) written in the first half of 2008, although this was down 8 per cent on the six months to December last year.

Commissioned by the Senior Australians Equity Release Association of Lenders (Sequal), the study found the size of each new loan grew over the six months to June 2008, on average from $60,000 to $63,000.

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Q: I have received notices from my insurance company asking me to provide proof of a “mandatory photo inspection” for a Honda that was purchased new and delivered to me with 6 miles on the odometer.

I am informed that NYS Insurance Law requires owners of vehicles with comprehensive and collision coverage to provide a “mandatory physical damage insurance inspection” for vehicles that are seven years or newer. I guess I can understand it for the purchase of a used vehicle but not a new one. It seems that the requirement for an inspection could be met at a lower cost with a statement from the dealer.I suspect this law was passed at the behest of the insurance companies. It surely is not to protect the consumer.

- Ralph Miller, Berne

A: Contrary to your suspicions, we didn’t find any fans of this law among insurance agents or regulators.

Matthew Guilbault, director of government and industry affairs for the Professional Insurance Agents of New York State, said his organization supports repeal of the law underlying the regulation, and a spokesman for the state Insurance Department said it’s among regulations that his agency is looking to revise and update.

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Reverse mortgage loans have grown increasingly popular in recent years, but lately potential borrowers have been in a holding pattern of sorts, waiting for new federal laws to take effect.

President Bush signed legislation earlier this year raising the loan limit on reverse mortgages that are guaranteed by the federal government; such loans make up a majority of reverse mortgages.

The new laws are intended to give older homeowners access to more of their homes’ equity, provide stricter consumer protection, and, most important for New York-area residents, offer co-op owners the chance to apply for these loans.

“As long as the co-op board allows it, it’ll be a big opportunity for people,” said David Peskin, the chief executive of the Senior Lending Network, a reverse mortgage lender in Melville, N.Y.

Reverse mortgages allow borrowers who are 62 or older to tap into their homes’ equity without having to repay the loan in the conventional way.

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There has been a mixed reaction to proposals for the reform of business insurance contract law, according to a summary of responses published by the English and Scottish Law Commissions this month.

In particular, consultees have criticised measures intended to provide additional safeguards for business insureds contracting on insurers’ standard written terms and attempts to clarify the role of the insurance intermediary.

Announcing the publication of the summary of responses last week, Law Commission solicitor Elizabeth Waller said: “There is support for reform of business insurance law but we will be consulting further on this subject.  We shall publish an Issues Paper this winter which will contain details of some revised proposals for businesses.”

The Commissions’ July 2007 consultation paper considered pre-contract disclosure of information, warranties and the role of the broker in both consumer and business insurance.

For consumers, the paper set out a mandatory regime that would bring the law into line with current industry practice and the ‘fair and reasonable’ test applied to complaints handled by the Financial Ombudsman Service.

For business insurance, the Commissions asked for comments on a default regime that would allow parties to ‘contract out’ if they wished.

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Amid empty houses, officials promote new program

Tammy Soudbakhsh was one of the first people to move into her subdivision more than 10 years ago.

She bought a modestly priced house in a stable neighborhood where her daughter had plenty of peers to play with.

Several homes around Soudbakhsh are now empty because of foreclosures. The vacated houses sit inside a northwest Las Vegas ZIP code that has more than 1,500 foreclosures.

“We knew who our neighbors were,” Soudbakhsh said. “Now, we don’t even know who’s next to us.”

Against that backdrop Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid talked up the new Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which provides money aimed at getting people into empty, foreclosed homes so that the properties don’t continue to bring down their neighborhoods.

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It’s a grueling decision when a working parent looks at the company’s benefit package and sees that, on average, a family health insurance plan, costing a total $12,106, will mean $3,281 deducted from yearly wages. Another option for that worker is to insure only himself or herself, costing a total of $4,479 for individual coverage, and resulting in a yearly paycheck deduction of $694. Those average cost figures are from a Kaiser Family Foundation September survey.

A study released today by the Journal of the American Medical Assn. found that, of the 9 million children and adolescents in the U.S. who have no health insurance coverage, 28% have an insured parent.

Since the 1996 passage of a law aimed at getting more kids insured, even when their parents are not, the number of insured children has increased. A 2007 Los Angeles Times story examined the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Still, 9 million U.S. children have no health insurance.

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Developers Diversified Plans to Sell Stakes in Retail Properties 

Shopping-center owner Developers Diversified Realty Corp. intends to sell stakes in several of its retail properties to institutional investors in a bid to raise capital to pay down debt.

Meanwhile, Developers Diversified said the liquidation of a large tenant, retailer Mervyn’s LLC, won’t sap its financial results to a “material” extent. In a statement released Monday, the company said that other retailers have shown “significant interest” in the 38 Mervyn’s locations in its shopping centers.

Developers Diversified’s statement came after research firm Green Street Advisors distributed a report to its clients late Friday outlining that Developers Diversified will need to take “costly and painful” measures to refinance and pay off $5.2 billion in debt coming due by the end of 2012. That includes roughly $450 million due in 2009 and $1 billion due in 2010.

Green Street estimated Developers Diversified’s odds of paying off and refinancing its debt during the next four years at 80%, adding that “bankruptcy risk is a real, albeit low probability, issue.” Green Street calculates that Developers Diversified will need to sell $1.5 billion to $2 billion in assets to deal with its debts coming due.

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In Washington state, Reza and Arzu Forough pay more than $1,000 a week for behavior therapy for their 12-year-old autistic son.

In Indiana, Sean and Michele Trivedi get the same type of therapy for their 11-year-old daughter. But they pay $3,000 a year and their health insurance covers the rest.

Two families. Two states. Big difference in out-of-pocket costs.

If autism advocates get their way, more states will follow Indiana’s lead by requiring health insurers to cover intensive and costly behavior therapy for autism.

In the past two years, six states – Texas, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana – passed laws requiring such coverage, costing in some cases up to $50,000 a year per child.

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