Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 3, 1990 TAG: 9003032610
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The story told how Tucker, 37, grew up in a boys' home, worked his way through college and became a "role model" salesman for Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York.
But when the article was published, Tucker was in the midst of an embezzlement scheme that cheated policyholders out of as much as $104,000.
"You took a position of trust and responsibility and you used it illegally, at the expense of innocent people who relied on you to do the right thing with their money," Judge Diane Strickland told Tucker during a hearing Friday in Roanoke Circuit Court.
Strickland then sentenced Tucker to five years in prison.
Tucker's rise from a troubled child to a successful businessman in Roanoke, where he once was president of the Lions Club, ended last year when an audit at Mutual Life revealed discrepancies in his accounts.
An investigator for Mutual Life testified Friday that Tucker forged checks, falsified the amount of some insurance policies and intercepted refund checks to policyholders and deposited them in his own account.
The scheme ran from January 1987 to February 1989 - the same time Tucker was building a reputation as a caring insurance salesman who often sent flowers to his customers.
"I would say that I had a real good position of trust. I went out of my way to take care of the policyholders," Tucker testified.
"You also went out of your way to take their money, didn't you?" Chief Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Betty Jo Anthony asked.
"Right," Tucker responded.
But while admitting that he cheated his customers, Tucker disputed the $104,000 amount cited by prosecutors. "I can't believe I took that amount of money," he said. "I admit to $35,000."
Tucker said he turned to embezzlement as a way to finance a lifestyle that grew too fast for his earnings to keep pace. Most of the expenses were for clothes, furniture and other items charged to credit cards, he said.
"I guess I got pressured for some money," he said. "My wife would call me at work and say we have this bill and that bill to pay."
More than 30 policyholders, from Virginia and several other states, were caught in the scheme, according to Barrie Pease, a fraud investigator for Mutual Life. Since then, Mutual Life has repaid all of the policyholders, plus interest, at a cost of more than $130,000, Pease testified.
Tucker used a variety of methods to embezzle, Pease said. But his most common practice was to start new polices in which holders would be entitled to cash "roll over" values. But after receiving refunds to be turned over to policyholders, Tucker would say nothing and pocket the money himself, Pease testified.
The policyholders - most of them elderly - allowed Tucker to make changes in their accounts almost unquestioned. One woman "said she was in the habit of signing any forms that Mr. Tucker put in front of her," Pease testified.
At a hearing last December, Tucker pleaded guilty to one count of embezzling more than $200 from Mutual Life.
"I'm 100 percent to blame," Tucker said. "It makes me feel awful."
Tucker was indicted in June 1989, almost a year after the article about him ran in the insurance magazine. In the article, Tucker spoke of the "honesty and responsibility" that he learned while living at the Patrick Henry Boys Plantation in central Virginia.
In testimony Friday, Tucker said he was sent to the home after his father died and his mother worried that he was running with the "wrong crowd" in Roanoke.
Anthony had asked that Tucker receive a 10-year term, arguing that he used his position of trust to take advantage of his policyholders and supplement his $50,000-a-year legitimate income.
"That puts this crime in a whole different category from the cases that this court sees every day, where people steal because it's almost a matter of life and death for them," Anthony said.
But in asking for leniency, defense attorney Harvey Lutins of Roanoke argued that because of Tucker's position in the community, he already has been stigmatized in a way that an ordinary thief would not be.
"Grattan is a branded felon now," Lutins said. "And that brand will follow him the rest of his life."
by CNB