Insurance mogul Lindberg gets 12 years for $2bn fraud

North Carolina investment firm founder Greg Lindberg was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in prison for siphoning more than $2 billion in reserves backing insurance policies and using the proceeds to pay for jets, mansions and a 214-foot yacht.

Lindberg, 56, pleaded guilty in 2024 to conspiring to defraud insurers and thousands of policy holders in one of the largest insurance frauds in US history, federal prosecutors said in a statement. He was separately convicted at trial of conspiring to bribe the elected state insurance commissioner and replace a senior regulator who oversaw his companies.

Claiming he’d be the next Warren Buffett, Lindberg sought to acquire insurance companies with long-term liabilities that he would place in assets affiliated with his investment firm, Global Growth, the government said. But he went to “unlawful extremes” by investing too much, flouting asset rules and deceiving regulators and third parties about the transactions, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

“Lindberg’s scheme depended on the illusion — which he fraudulently promoted — that he operated separate insurance companies with separate assets for the benefit of separate policyholders,” prosecutors wrote. “In reality, Lindberg treated all his companies, insurance or not, as one big pool of money that belonged to him to use as he pleased.”

US District Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr sentenced Lindberg at a hearing in federal court in Charlotte, North Carolina. That prison term was less than the 14 1/2 years sought by prosecutors. His defense lawyers had asked for the 40 months he’s already served in prison.

“As a result of Lindberg’s conduct, his insurance companies, third-party entities and policyholders suffered substantial financial hardship, and multiple of his insurance companies have been placed in rehabilitation and liquidation,” the Justice Department said in its statement. “To date, thousands of individual policyholders and other victims are collectively still owed more than $1 billion.”

The government argued Lindberg had “caused immense financial and emotional harm to countless people.” Fueled by greed and “a desire to become a financial titan,” Lindberg bought new companies and pursued a “billionaire” lifestyle that included spending more than $21 million on various women with whom he had or sought a personal relationship, it said.

The payments included $15.4 million to women, $2 million for matchmaking and dating services, and more than $600,000 for reproductive services.

Bloomberg Businessweek reported Lindberg has at least 12 children, including six or more through a network of egg donors and surrogates that encompassed at least 25 women. Lindberg was obsessed with having as many as 50 kids, said two people with direct knowledge of his motivations. In 2017, he wrote that he wanted to “create Valhalla on earth by 2055,” according to prosecutors.

The legal path for Lindberg has been convoluted. He was found guilty at trial in 2020 of the bribery scheme and served nearly two years in prison before his conviction was overturned on appeal. A separate jury convicted him in 2024. Later that year, he also pleaded guilty to two of the 13 counts he faced in an indictment: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, insurance business fraud and investment adviser fraud, and conspiracy to launder money. 

Lindberg agreed to help insurance companies recover money for thousands of policyholders and help identify “billions of dollars of funds to make restitution to all policyholders and other entities,” according to a court filing. Working with a court-appointed special master, one of his companies, Clanwilliam, was sold last year for net proceeds of $349 million, according to a sentencing memo by his lawyers.

A special master appointed by the court has recommended that Lindberg be ordered to pay $1.63 billion in restitution. The judge plans to hold separate hearings on the restitution, prosecutors said.

Lindberg is among those who have sought pardons from President Donald Trump. Lindberg reportedly hired Trump’s ex-bodyguard to lobby on his behalf. In December, North Carolina’s insurance commissioner, Mike Causey wrote a letter to Trump urging him not to pardon Lindberg, saying his “criminal conduct was not incidental, technical, or victimless.”

Global growth

Lindberg, who grew up in a working-class family in San Mateo, California, attended Yale University, where he started his first company, which focused on research into the home care industry. Over time, the firm expanded through acquisitions and branched into business software, health care technology and financial services, renaming itself Global Growth in 2020, according to its website. The firm has invested in more than 120 companies, with assets valued at more than $5 billion, the site says.

In 2019, prosecutors said Lindberg posed a risk of fleeing and shouldn’t be granted release on bond because he had a private plane and an ocean-going yacht, registered in the Cayman Islands. They said he had access to bank accounts in 18 countries, including Switzerland, Malta, Luxembourg and the UK.

He also had “significant relationships” with people in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Poland and Belarus, while giving “millions of dollars to women from Kazakhstan and Russia,” the government said in a court filing.

Lindberg said at the time that he lived on his yacht and in rented apartments in New York and Beverly Hills.

The cases are US v. Lindberg, 19-cr-22 and 23-cr-48, US District Court, Western District of North Carolina (Charlotte).

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