Dec. 14--HARTFORD -- A federal jury needed only about 90 minutes Monday to convict former Hartford insurance broker Earl O'Garro Jr, of three fraud charges, concluding that he swindled more than a million dollars from lenders and clients to pay for a Caribbean condominium and other trappings of a high-end lifestyle.
The jury returned guilty verdicts on two counts of wire fraud and one of mail fraud at about 4 p.m. in U.S. District Court in Hartford. They had not begun deliberations until after a morning and early afternoon of closing arguments and instructions from the judge.
Each of the convictions carries a maximum sentence of up 20 years, although O'Garro is likely to face something far less. The federal probation department will recommend a sentence under the guideline system used in federal court.
U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson ordered O'Garro back in court for sentencing on March 7. Thompson continued O'Garro's $500,000 bail, but ordered him to wear an electronic monitoring device that will track his movements.
Earlier in the day, the prosecution and defense closed their cases by giving the jury dramatically different portrayals of the ambitious young business owner accused of swindling millions from lenders and a client.
Federal prosecutors Avi Perry and Michael Gustafson told jurors that O'Garro, 32, ran his Hybrid Insurance brokerage like a personal fundraising operation, using business loans and client premium payments to finance a lifestyle that included private school for toddlers, $100,000 sedans and a $1 million Caribbean condominium.
But O'Garro public defender Tracy Hayes described him as a "nice guy" who was "over his head" when he founded his own brokerage, was poorly served by incompetent employees and who was driven to misappropriate money in a desperate, but good faith effort to save his company.
The prosecution pinned its closing argument on the 4,000-square foot, ocean side condo O'Garro bought in Sosua in the Dominican Republic on April 23, 2013.
Perry said "every lie the defendant told and ever dollar he stole" was designed by O'Garro to raise money to meet a series of $100,000 payments that began coming due within weeks of closing on the condo.
Perry said O'Garro created dummy business partnerships and a forged email exchange to trick a commercial lender into giving him more than $800,000, bluffed the City of Hartford into wiring him another $900,000 and lied on an application in order to get a $500,000 business assistance loan from the state Department of Economic and Community Development.
Much of the money went toward the condo, some went to personal expenses and much of the remainder was used in frantic efforts to stop cancellation of insurance coverage for clients whose premiums O'Garro had collected but never paid to insurance providers, according the prosecution evidence.
Hayes, who defended O'Garro with fellow federal defender Deirdre A. Murray, pinned much of his plea to the jury on O'Garro's intent, which is an element of the wire and mail fraud charges on which O'Garro is being tried. Hayes said he was not acting in "bad faith,' but in a "good faith" effort to save his business.
Gustafson, in the government's rebuttal dismissed the argument about intent. He told jurors that a bank robber is not absolved of robbery when he tells police he intended to donate the money to cancer research.
As the young owner of a start-up business specializing in the complex area of high-priced and high-risk insurance coverage, Hayes said, O'Garro was out of his depth. But he said Hybrid was hamstrung by incompetent employees who were lax about demanding premium payments from clients.
"It's not as easy as saying the money was taken and used for something else," Hayes said. "It just wasn't coming in."
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