Fraud aided by insider Steve Smaha Thu, 13 Jun 91 17:08 EDT From the 13 Jun 91 Austin American-Statesman, staff report:
"Son testifies against father in insurance case"
The son of a Houston insurance fraud defendant told jurors Wednesday that he installed a command in a computer system that would delete traces of an investment plan created by his father. Bud Skillern, 56, former financial consultant to the insolvent American Teachers Life Insurance Co., has pleaded innocent to accusations that he stole funds from an investment plan involving the firm.
Tuesday, witnesses outlined Skillern's plan, which used ATL to sell $100,000 single-premium annuities. [...]
Prosecutors spent Tuesday questioning witnesses to try to show that Skillern's method of having buyers acquire the annuities through promissory notes - simple IOUs - is highly questionable, because annuities normally are bought with cash.
On Wednesday, Skillern's son, 24-year-old Michael Don Skillern, testified that he was in charge of programming computers at ATL to make calculations required by the investment plan. The son told jurors that he built a command into the program that would delete all traces of the plan in the computer system. "The idea was that if (State Board of Insurance) examiners came into American Teachers Life, it would not look good for General Mercantile to be doing business out of American Teachers (office). So I installed an erase feature," said the younger Skillern. He also said that General Mercantile Finance Corp. - a company owned by his father - was supposed to lend money to the annuity buyers. [...]
In the grand jury indictment of Bud Skillern, it is alleged that Skillern sold the $100,000 annuities to Premier [Bank of Dallas] after he assured the bank officials that ATL had been fully paid for the annuities. [...]
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