1,200 Scammed, Sentences Questioned

Brian, Brad and Dean Shecht-man, cousins who allegedly swindled more than 1,200 elderly victims out of millions of dollars in a bait-and-switch insurance scheme are in the limelight again as details surface about a plea-bargain in which they received light sentences.

The trio began serving their time in August.

The Bonita News cited a memo in which a prosecutor asked insurance investigators to endorse a plea bargain. It calls for Brian, the mastermind behind the scheme to spend 2-1/2 years in prison and Brad and Dean to spend a year in Lee County jail.

Under state sentencing guidelines all three cousins would spend a minimum of eight years in prison with a maximum of more than 30 years on racketeering and insurance fraud charges, to which they pleaded guilty.

Florida’s Office of Statewide Prosecution received the case in August 2001 after state insurance investigators spent two years examining the accusations. Prosecutors, who answer to Attorney General Charlie Crist, made an arrest three years later.

Crist’s office provided a memo in response to an article in the Naples Daily News in which Tom Gallagher, Florida CFO, and Crist’s political rival for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, said the cases were mishandled and that some elderly victims died before they could testify.

Gallagher said prosecutors should have gotten the case going a lot earlier and that the trio should have received tougher sentences.