Restitution for the owner of a capsized tour boat as well as the families of those who went down with the vessel seems unlikely, as issues regarding the boat operator’s fraudulent liability policy complicate matters.
In 2005, the tour boat Ethan Allen sank into Lake George. The boat’s passengers were predominantly seniors, and twenty individuals perished from the accident.
It was later revealed that the operator of the boat, Shoreline Cruises, was sold a fraudulent liability insurance policy. The operator had paid premiums for a policy worth $2 million for nearly two years, only to find out two weeks after the incident that the policy never existed.
Without a policy, Shoreline was vulnerable to the lawsuits that followed the accident.
Malchus Irvin Boncamper, the accountant who sold Shoreline the fraudulent policy, pled guilty to the crime about five years ago. Boncamper admitted to coming up with a duplicitous scheme to sell fake liability insurance policies over the course of 10 years to companies such as Shoreline.
The court was to determine how much compensation would be due from Boncamper and his associates to serve as restitution for the families of the accident’s victims. The accountant and his fellow criminals, however, had to serve eight-year sentences, leaving victims’ families unpaid for quite some time.
Recently, Boncamper made headlines once again when his name was attached to Mossack Fonseca—the law firm made infamous by the “Panama papers” leak for creating shell companies to hide the cash of wealthy individuals. Boncamper himself was made a phantom director by the firm on at least 30 shell companies.
Despite the findings, both lawyers and authorities found it even more difficult to figure out how to secure restitution for the victims of the Ethan Allen accident.
"Our inability to regain restitution in this has been very frustrating," said Mark Schachner, an attorney representing James Quirk, owner of the Ethan Allen. "We put in a claim for any restitution that may become available but we did not attach a dollar figure to it."
"This was one of the saddest, most complicated cases that I have ever handled in 30 years," said lawyer James Hacker, representing the families of the victims. "The only reason that this scam came to light was the magnitude of this disaster."
The Times Union noted that one of Boncamper’s associates in his insurance scheme, Dallas resident Robert Steve Mills, was also indicted for his crimes. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was ordered to pay $2.4 million in restitution—a repayment that is also unlikely to be fulfilled.
