Wednesday, April 22, 1998 | 10:14 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- A Las Vegas man pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping his mother try to collect on a $135,000 life insurance policy on his father who was still alive.
Hossein Esmael "Essy" Saatchi, 22, will be sentenced June 16 on his plea to attempted insurance fraud, a gross misdemeanor. His mother, Jeanette Saatchi, 48, of Las Vegas pleaded guilty to the same charge earlier this month and will be sentenced June 1.
Deputy Attorney General Jan Murray said Mrs. Saatchi tried to collect death benefits and Social Security payments, claiming her husband died in Iran and was buried in that country.
Her son, Essy, swore he attended the funeral of his father and saw the body being buried in Iran. His mother, according to Murray, submitted false documents including a forged Colorado death certificate to back up her claims.
Social Security and New York Life Insurance refused to pay the claims. The case broke open, Murray said, when the father and son appeared at the Social Security office together. Essy was pushing for survivor benefits when a case worker discovered it was his father who accompanied him.
Murray said there was not enough evidence to file a criminal charge to show the father was involved in the scheme. But during the several year effort by Mrs. Saatchi to collect benefits, her husband Hossein Saatchi Sr., who is ill, was living in their Las Vegas home.
Mrs. Saatchi later withdrew all her claims after her husband was identified in the Social Security office.
Murray said the felony charges were negotiated down to a gross misdemeanor. Murray said the attorney general will recommend community service, a suspended jail term, counseling and Mrs. Saatchi's restitution of $571 in benefits received from the Sunstrand Corp.
The father, mother and son all appeared in court Tuesday.
Murray said New York Life spent "a lot of money" trying to run down whether the death had taken place.
This is a common scheme -- relatives make up a story that a person has died in a foreign land making it difficult to verify -- used to defraud life insurance companies, Murray said.
"Fortunately, this elaborate scheme to defraud the insurance company and Social Security did not succeed. The consumers ultimately pay the price for insurance fraud in the form of higher premiums," Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa said.
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