Steve Standridge
(A correction has been made to this article. See end for details.)
Unless his defense attorney can change the judge’s mind, former Mount Ida insurance broker Steve Standridge will be sentenced Friday in federal court in Hot Springs.
Little Rock attorney Tim Dudley said last week that he might try to get the hearing postponed, but Louis L. Loyd of Hot Springs, Standridge’s other attorney of record, tried that a few weeks back and struck out with U.S. District Judge Susan O. Hickey.
The timing of Standridge’s sentencing hearing is more critical than most because federal prosecutors have agreed not to oppose a plea for leniency if Standridge manages to pay 80 percent of the restitution he owes before he is sentenced.
And that’s a lot of money, since he agreed to total restitution of almost $7.1 million.
Standridge, 58, who lost his insurance license in 2010, pleaded guilty in July to two of the 35 felonies with which he had been charged by federal prosecutors in both the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas. But he reserved the right to withdraw his plea if Judge Hickey didn’t accept the deal he negotiated with federal prosecutors: restitution and a sentence of no more than 60 months.
As of Oct. 31, when Dudley filed a sentencing memorandum with the court, Standridge was “working diligently to raise the money to pay those debts before sentencing.”
How much of the restitution he has rounded up is still a mystery. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenny Elser, the Western District prosecutor, said none had actually been paid in as of last Wednesday, but the sentencing was still more than a week away.
Dudley’s memorandum gives the first hint as to what led Standridge, the National Professional Insurance Agents Association’s Professional Agent of the Year in 2006, to commit federal crimes: “While not offered as an excuse, the defendant committed the offenses involved here because he was repaying loans to others which he had personally guaranteed and which the debtors were not paying.”
Dudley told Whispers that the loans were premium finance loans to clients of Steve Standridge Insurance. But he gave no details, so it isn’t clear whether his non-excuse concerns legitimate premium finance loans that he co-signed for clients or the fraudulent premium finance loans that were the basis of 12 federal felony counts.
(Tip: Insurance agents normally don’t guarantee premium finance loans for clients. But if one did and the client wasn’t paying, the normal agent would cancel the insurance policy ASAP and use the premium refund to settle up.)
One of the counts to which Standridge pleaded guilty, in exchange for dismissal of the others, was money laundering related to the misappropriation of a $350,000 premium finance loan that he arranged with the Bank of Delight.
Two of Standridge’s former customers, Danny Wood of Idabel, Okla., and Gregory A. Hunt of Russellville, went to federal prison for their participation in fraudulent premium finance loans. Wood, 62, was released earlier this year, and Hunt died at the federal prison in Memphis in February 2013 at age 46.
‘Determined to Pay’
So while his clients went to prison, Standridge’s memorandum asks for a sentence of probation so that Standridge can continue to work so that he can keep paying restitution.
“Mr. Sam Bailey … states that he will also employ Mr. Standridge if he gets probation and that he and Mr. Standridge have developed a plan that will allow payment of restitution by the end of March, 2015.”
Bailey is the senior pastor of Twin Lakes Baptist Church in Mountain Home. He was formerly president of North American Spine, a Dallas company that offers various therapies for back pain, but parted ways with that company in early 2012.
It’s not clear exactly what kind of work Standridge is doing for Bailey that would allow him to earn seven figures in a relatively short time (but your Whispers staff, none of whom is a convicted felon, might like to get in on it).
Standridge had “numerous and large debts” when he lost his insurance license almost five years ago, according to the memorandum, but “has successfully paid all of the debts owed except those involved in this case.”
The filing gives no clue as to how large the other debts were, nor why Standridge chose to pay other creditors ahead of those to whom restitution was court-ordered.
According to Dudley, Standridge chose not to pursue “a quick and easy bankruptcy.” Instead, he “is determined to pay the full amount of restitution owed. He cannot do that from prison.”
(Correction, Dec. 11, 2014: Contrary to the original report, Sam Bailey has not been associated with North American Spine since early 2012.)
Sign up for Daily E-news
