EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. – A federal jury convicted two Florida men of fraud for selling “relatively worthless” health insurance policies to unsuspecting victims in southern Illinois and elsewhere via a telemarketing scheme.
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois said Steven Dorfman, 39, and John A. Sand, 49, ran Simple Health, a health insurance telemarketing company based in south Florida. Dorfman was the owner and CEO of the company, and Sand served as the company’s vice president of sales.
The indictment accused both men of directing salespersons to lie to thousands of prospective customers by convincing them their policies “would function like major medical insurance.” This led to many victims falling into tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of medical debt because the Simple Health policies didn’t cover them.
That’s because Simple Health plans provided low amounts of coverage for medical expenses. When the policies reached their low caps, the customers were responsible for paying 100% of the medical costs beyond that.
It’s believed Simple Health sold these limited indemnity policies to more than 400,000 people across the country between May 2012 and November 2018 and generated more than $190 million in ill-gotten gains. More than 1,400 policies were sold to victims in all 38 counties in the Southern District of Illinois, prosecutors said.
Both Dorfman and Sand were convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, four counts of mail fraud, and eight counts of wire fraud.
Dorfman will be sentenced on May 21 and Sand the following day.
A third person, Candida L. Girouard, 47, was also named in the indictment. She worked as the chief compliance officer for Simple Health. She previously pleaded guilty in November 2023 to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. She’ll be sentenced on May 15.
Each sentencing will happen at the federal courthouse in East St. Louis.
