MISSISSIPPI
San Antonio Express-News
HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press
Updated 9:16 a.m., Friday, September 28, 2012
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — State officials are dropping the remnants of an 11-year-old lawsuit after collecting as much money as they think they can get in reparations for insurance fraud by a convicted financier who claimed Vatican ties.
Attorneys for Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney filed a motion Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Miss., that seeks to voluntarily dismiss the last three defendants, including an elderly priest. Claims against the Vatican were dropped earlier this year. A judge has not ruled on the motion.
The lawsuit originally was filed in 2001 by Cheney’s predecessor, George Dale, after financier Martin Frankel bilked insurers in five states out of $200 million during the 1990s. Insurance regulators in Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas joined the lawsuit.
Frankel is in prison after pleading guilty to 24 counts of fraud and racketeering.
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