False Security

To most of us, insurance represents a secure investment that provides affordable, dependable protection. Author Kenneth D. Myers believes that this lucrative industry is a business going bad. In False Security, Myers chronicles the abuses of the insurance industry, exposing the inside story of bad investments, unscrupulous or naive executives, bilked clients, collapsed companies, and staggering financial losses. What emerges from this expose is an alarming picture of incompetence, greed, and corruption. Myers reveals how experienced insurance executives jeopardized their companies by trying to price-gouge the competition out of business, only to go under themselves. He looks at hostile takeovers, the extravagant use of ill-gotten profits, the many income-tax "safe havens, " and the squandering of millions of dollars by executives who failed at one company after another and eventually fled the country. The result of thousands of hours of investigation and many interviews, False Security outlines never-before-reported details of greed and corruption gathered from state and federal prosecutors, industry officials, and the criminals themselves. Some of the perpetrators were also involved in the savings-and-loan scandal and today are in prison, but others are free, still pursuing questionable enterprises.