A former insurance agent from Essex County was sentenced to six years in state prison on Wednesday for filing hundreds of phony life insurance applications to score commission fees.
Authorities say Stanley Jerome, 33, pulled in commissions and bonuses totaling $1,132,675 in the scheme, which included paying low-income people for their identifying information and using them to apply for policies with MassMutual.
He pleaded guilty in March to second-degree money laundering and insurance fraud. He was sentenced before Superior Court Judge Ronald Wigler in Essex County.
According to the the state Attorney General’s Office, Jerome would make up salary, employment and other financial information for his phony applicants, and used money he received in commission from approved policies to make premiums on others in order to fend off detection.
He also paid the straw policy-holders to open up bank accounts in their own names, which he used to move hundreds of thousands of dollars around between 2013 and 2015 to make payments on bogus accounts.
S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
