Accountant charged with defrauding elderly clients following state raid

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — DeKalb police and state agents arrested an accountant Wednesday on charges related to accusations that he was stealing his clients’ personal information and then using that information to take out life insurance policies on them with him as the sole beneficiary.

Agents and police raided Earle Turner’s Covington Highway offices and led him away in handcuffs. He’s charged with 19 counts of insurance fraud and 11 counts of identity theft.

“He is a CPA,” Deputy State Insurance Commissioner Jay Florence said. “His clients, a lot of them were elderly, and that is who he was taking advantage of."

Investigators said for the past four years, Turner was taking the personal information of some of his elderly clients, then using that information to take out life insurance policies on them, naming himself as the sole beneficiary.

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Florence said you cannot take out life insurance policies on someone without having an “insurable interest” in them, which he said Turner did not.

According to Florence, Mutual of Omaha paid Turner $10,000 after one of his clients died, but got suspicious when his name turned up on other seemingly unrelated policies.

That’s when the insurer contacted the State Insurance Commissioner’s Office.

"Crime obviously doesn’t pay,” Florence said.

“It is a relatively small amount of money for the time that he’s going to be doing, for all time that he’s going to be doing and for the legal troubles that he’s going to facing."

Turner was booked into the DeKalb County Jail.

Cox Media Group