Broker Charged With Defrauding Customers

A Studio City insurance broker has been charged with defrauding his customers and faces revocation of his license because he allegedly sold nearly $4 million of insurance from unlicensed and financially unstable companies that have since been banned from doing business in California.

State Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi said Monday that, since 1991, Robert George Burnham essentially “rubber-stamped” insurance policies without verifying that the companies issuing the policies were financially sound. Many of the companies’ policyholders were in areas of Los Angeles that suffered the most damage during the civil disturbances a year ago.

Burnham is accused of renting his insurance license to I & I Insurance Marketing and its owners, Victor and Michelle Batarseh, who then handled insurance policy transactions with four insurance companies that the California Department of Insurance has banned. Garamendi is also seeking to revoke the licenses of I & I and the Batarsehs.

Burnham allegedly told the Department of Insurance that three of the insurance companies together reported nearly $5 million in claims as a result of the riots, most of which remain unpaid.

The department has also accused Burnham of illegally acting as a general agent for another insurance company that has been banned in California.