A former Annapolis insurance agent who pocketed nearly $70,000 in local school board insurance premiums can avoid going to jail if he finishes repaying the money he embezzled.
Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Ronald A. Silkworth sentenced Andrew L. Taylor, 42, to 18 months in jail and suspended all but the five days he served after his arrest last year, placed him on five years' probation and ordered him to pay restitution. Taylor is on a repayment schedule of $2,000 a month. The probation includes 100 hours of community service and a year of house arrest.
Taylor took premiums for catastrophic coverage of student athletes from 14 Maryland school boards and from the Ballet Theatre of Annapolis in 1996 but did not pay for the policies. He pleaded guilty in November to one count of felony theft.
Taylor's mother and wife wept yesterday as they told Silkworth that Taylor is a kind person, a wonderful father and a churchgoer whose depression resulted in terrible judgment.
After losing a $10,000-a-month account, Taylor used the premiums to cover expenses that included country club fees, a Jaguar and child support, rather than scale back his lifestyle.
"I am so truly sorry for the shame and the embarrassment I have caused my family and my profession," said Taylor, who is selling modular homes to repay the insurance company's third-party administrator, which covered the pre- miums. He owes $32,000 of the money he took.
Taylor and his wife and child moved to Georgia to take care of his ailing mother-in-law.
The sentence was close to what defense attorney Carroll McCabe had sought. Assistant Attorney General Michael DiPietro had sought a year of incarceration.
The State Insurance Commission revoked Taylor's insurance license last year.
Taylor, formerly of the 400 block of Wind Whisper Lane in Annapolis and now of Hiram, Ga., had a small insurance firm in Annapolis called Mayberry Benefit Systems, a reference to the town where the Andy Griffith television show was set.
School boards -- including those in Carroll, Montgomery and Queen Anne's counties -- bought coverage from Taylor for the 1996-1997 school year under a program sponsored by the Maryland Association of Boards of Education. He did not forward nearly $130,000 in premiums to Maksin Management of New Jersey, keeping it in his escrow account, DiPietro said.
When Maksin reached Taylor in North Carolina in October 1996, he had spent more than half of the premium money.
"Mr. Taylor is not the personification of evil; he is not Public Enemy No. 1," DiPietro said. But he added, "If, God forbid, a child would have had an injury in July or August 1996 these people would have been without coverage."
McCabe said Taylor has a family history of severe depression, and a psychiatrist blamed Taylor's theft on depression that began in 1995. He remains under treatment.
Pub Date: 3/02/99