A Pennsylvania federal judge has granted final approval of a class action RICO settlement estimated to be worth at least $184 million and possibly as much as $530 million to a class of mostly elderly investors who say they were lured by deceptive marketing practices to purchase long-term annuities that often had maturity dates far beyond their own life expectancies.
In her 75-page opinion in In re American Investors Life Insurance Co. Annuity Marketing and Sales Practices Litigation, U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin also awarded nearly $17.7 million in attorney fees and $550,000 in expenses to the team of plaintiffs lawyers led by Jerome M. Marcus and Jonathan Auerbach of Marcus & Auerbach in Wyncote, Pa., and John R. Hargrove of Hargrove Pierson & Brown in Boca Raton, Fla.
