Released: September 05, 2007

Elderly ensnared by investment pitches

Source: Carrie Johnson and John Solomon, Washington Post (Free Registration)

Less than a year before he died, Arthur Moyer converted his $500,000 life savings into a complex investment he could not tap for a decade without incurring steep fees.

The 79-year-old former machinist from Pennsylvania poured his money into a deferred annuity at the urging of a salesman who presented himself as a retirement expert and collected a hefty commission, according to Moyer’s son and a family adviser. They said Moyer, ailing and confined to a wheelchair, spent the final weeks of his life slumped with his head between his knees, fending off depression.

On the day Moyer was buried, a letter arrived, saying that the insurance company had agreed to the family’s demands to unwind the deal and return his life savings. His son Craig slipped a copy of the letter into the front pocket of Arthur Moyer’s dark gray funeral suit, “just so that he would know that it was taken care of, and that we got resolution on it,” Craig recalled last week.

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