Greg Lindberg


Greg Evan Lindberg is an American business executive and founder of Global Growth, a conglomerate specializing in information and financial services. He also donated large sums of money to political causes. In 2020 he was convicted of bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Early life and education

Greg Lindberg was born in San Mateo, California, United States in 1970, the youngest of five children. His father was an airline pilot. He attended Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, California before studying at Yale University, where he graduated with an economics degree in 1993.

Career

Global Growth

In 1991, while still attending Yale University, Lindberg launched Home Care Week, a health insurance compliance and reimbursement newsletter for home health agencies. He later transformed this venture into a conglomerate, Eli Global, based in Durham, North Carolina. The conglomerate operated as an information and financial services company.
In 2012 Lindberg began investigating the possibility of acquiring insurance companies, displaying a particular interest in the large number of assets retained by such companies to fulfill payouts. In 2014 Eli Global made its first insurance acquisition when it purchased a burial-policy insurer based in Alabama. Lindberg wished to loan the insurer's assets to other businesses he owned, but the number of the company's assets he could invest in affiliated enterprises was restricted by Alabama state laws. Lindberg then relocated the insurer to North Carolina, where regulations on such practices were vaguer, and began trading the burial-policy insurer's investments in treasury bonds for large loans in his own companies. Though North Carolina regulators usually enforced a cap of affiliated investments on insurers at 10% of their assets, the North Carolina Department of Insurance led by North Carolina Commissioner of Insurance Wayne Goodwin reached a special agreement with Lindberg, allowing his burial-policy insurer to invest as much as 40% of its assets in affiliates, though this limit was also eventually breached. In 2015 and 2016 Lindberg acquired more insurers and grouped them together as the Global Bankers Insurance Group. As a result of the insurer acquisitions, Eli Global became markedly more profitable. Lindberg ultimately loaned about $2 billion from the insurance companies he had acquired to his affiliated corporations, using much of it to expand his private holdings. By 2019 he had acquired over 100 companies. On June 27, 2019 the North Carolina Department of Insurance placed several of Lindberg's insurance companies into "rehabilitation", citing concerns about their liquidity and ability to meet their obligations to policy holders. Eli Global was re-branded as Global Growth in September and Lindberg resigned as its chief executive officer. Following the public disclosure of Lindberg's personal legal troubles and those of his companies, he and some of his companies were sued by several corporations for failure to uphold business agreements.

Political donations

Lindberg is registered as an independent voter. In February 2016 Lindberg made his first financial contribution to a political cause in North Carolina, donating to North Carolina Commissioner of Insurance Wayne Goodwin's reelection campaign. That month he also hosted a fundraiser for Goodwin. Lindberg then began funding N.C. Opportunity Committee, a political action committee which produced pro-Goodwin advertisements. A spokesman for Lindberg asserted that Linberg appreciated that Goodwin was a "business-minded insurance commissioner" and that his donations were unrelated to the insurance department's handling of Lindberg's businesses during Goodwin's tenure. Between 2016 and 2018 he donated over $7.5 million to independent expenditure political action committees, state political committees, and federal political committees. Most of his contributions were given to members of the Republican Party, though he also gave a significant amount of money to members of the Democratic Party. In May 2018 N.C. Opportunity Committee dissolved and about a month later Lindberg created N.C. Growth and Prosperity, a new North Carolina-based political action committee.
In November 2017 Lindberg began donating money to political candidates' campaign funds in Florida, the same month one of his companies was declared "financially impaired" and thus restricted from doing business by state regulators. He became one of the largest individual donors to Florida Republicans during the 2018 elections, which included a transfer of $350,000 to political action committees supporting Rick Scott's candidacy for the U.S. Senate and other contributions to local legislative leaders and Chief Financial Officer of Florida Jimmy Patronis, whose office oversaw the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. He also donated at least $25,000 to Louisiana Commissioner of Insurance Jim Donelon's reelection campaign either personally or through his companies.

Criminal indictment and conviction

In late 2017, Lindberg became frustrated with the lending limits placed on the assets of his insurance firm, Global Bankers Insurance Group, by North Carolina Deputy Commissioner of Insurance Jackie Obusek. After several heated exchanges with Obusek, Lindberg and two business associates, John Gray and John Palermo Jr., began meeting with North Carolina Commissioner of Insurance Mike Causey, a Republican, to discuss Obusek's position in regulating the insurance firm. Lindberg suggested that Palermo be hired to regulate his companies. By January 2018 Causey had informed law enforcement officials of the meetings and he began assisting the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the agency investigated Lindberg's entreaties. Over the course of the discussions, Lindberg ultimately donated about $250,000 to the North Carolina Republican Party.
On March 18, 2019, Lindberg, Gray, and Palermo, along with the chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, Robin Hayes, were indicted by a federal grand jury for financial crimes including wire fraud and bribery. According to the indictment, Lindberg and his associates—coordinating with Hayes—promised to donate millions of dollars to the North Carolina Republican Party in exchange for favorable treatment of Global Bankers Insurance Group by Causey and the dismissal of the deputy insurance commissioner responsible for regulating Lindberg's businesses. In April the U.S. Department of Justice seized over $1.4 million from N.C. Growth and Prosperity bank accounts. Lindberg maintained his innocence and filed a motion requesting that the charges against him be dismissed, asserting that the contributions he made and requests to Causey did not constitute bribery. It was rejected by a federal judge.
Lindberg's trial began on February 18, 2020, in Charlotte, North Carolina, presided over by United States District Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr.. During the proceedings the prosecutors played recordings of conversations made between Lindberg and Causey. During the conversations Lindberg and his associates repeatedly urged Causey to reassign the deputy insurance commissioner who they felt was damaging his companies' reputation. They promised that in return they would give Causey millions of dollars to fund his reelection campaign, funneling the money through an independent expenditure committee and later the North Carolina Republican Party. Lindberg's attorneys accused Causey of trying to entrap Lindberg, possibly as retaliation for the businessman's backing of Goodwin as Commissioner of Insurance in the previous election. On March 5 Lindberg was found guilty of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and bribery by the jury.
Following the verdict, Lindberg filed a lawsuit against Causey, accusing him of abusing power and entrapment. Cogburn was alerted to possible attempts by Lindberg's lawyers to contact members of the jury after their deliberation. Cogburn forwarded the information to a United States Attorney's office to investigate possible jury harassment charges.
On April 2, Lindberg filed for an appeal to his conviction. In June Lindberg, citing in-part his own legal difficulties, donated money to the American Civil Liberties Union, saying that he was "disturbed by the consequences of prosecutorial abuses and unjust incarceration of non-violent offenders for some time."

Personal life

In 2013 Lindberg claimed to maintain a net worth of $340 million. Following his increased activity in the insurance industry in 2014, Lindberg began spending significantly more money on his private life than he had previously done. He purchased homes in Idaho and the Florida Keys, as well as making the largest-ever purchase for a private home in Raleigh, North Carolina. He also acquired a yacht and a private jet. In late 2017 a spokesperson stated that his net worth was $1.7 billion.
Lindberg married Tisha and had three children with her. They later became estranged, separating in 2017. As of 2019, the two were seeking divorce. Following the couple's separation, Lindberg began dating other women. He hired dozens of private investigators to observe and track the women; some women were followed at all times. Lindberg maintained that this was only done to ensure that the women were not living unhealthy or destructive lifestyles—such as taking narcotics—and told the operatives he hired that the women had consented to surveillance. Reports from the private investigators obtained by The Wall Street Journal indicated that Lindberg was particularly interested in the interactions the women had with other men. Some of the operatives were also doubtful that the women had consented to surveillance.