Health Plan Sponsor to Repay Kept Premiums

A business owner failed to refund more than $8,000 in employee-paid premiums after his company went out of business.

A business owner and health plan fiduciary has agreed to repay $8,892 in health insurance premiums employees paid toward their health care plan before the company went out of business.

According to the Department of Labor (DOL), before going out of business, Syncor LLC, doing business as Specprint Group Health Plan, began to have financial troubles and failed to timely pay its insurance premiums, resulting in the termination of the group health plan for employees. After terminating the plan, Blue Cross refunded the unused, late-paid premium to Syncor, but the company failed to refund the unused portion of the premiums to employees and instead used the refund for its own purposes.

William W. Bibb was Syncor’s owner and the fiduciary to the group health plan. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennesse approved a consent judgment in which Bibb agreed that he should be removed as the plan’s fiduciary, that he should be enjoined from acting as a fiduciary in the future, that the employees’ unreimbursed contributions should be repaid, and that AMI Benefits of Youngstown, Ohio, should be appointed as the plan’s successor fiduciary.

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