A 65-year-old Stephenville, Texas, man has been sentenced in a Kansas City federal court to three years and four months in federal prison without parole for his convictions on charges of money laundering and wire fraud.

Lewis Dean McBride, a financial planner and insurance agent, was also ordered to pay restitution of $430,000.

McBride was the owner of Texas-based Cowboy Financial, LLP and co-owner of D&D Advisors, LLC, in Lee's Summit, Missouri, a Kansas City suburb. Beginning in 2002, he also created several other LLCs for life settlement investment transactions conducted with several of his estate planning clients.

According to the IRS' Criminal Investigation unit, McBride received a cease and desist order in 2003 prohibiting him from selling viatical settlement investments, but continued to do so through the sale of unregistered securities. In addition, the IRS alleged that McBride developed and sold other high-risk, illegal insurance investments.

McBride was convicted of money laundering for soliciting loans from three investors totaling $370,000 that were secured by two life insurance policies, each with a face death benefit of $500,000. The investors were to be repaid either from the proceeds of the sale of the policies or the death benefits. However, no proceeds were ever paid to any of the three investors.

Instead, McBride sold one of the policies securing the loan through another one of his LLCs — Philley Insurance — to Milestone, an investment company. According to the IRS, Philley made fraudulent claims in its contract with Mliestone, leading Milestone to believe there were no competing claims on the policy. Milestone wired the purchase price of $95,000 to D&D Advisors, and those funds were then transferred to other McBride companies.

D&D Advisors also pleaded guilty to money laundering and paid $370,000 in restitution. The firm was then dissolved.

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