Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 1, 1994                   TAG: 9312310167
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: New York Daily News
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium

N.Y. COUPLE NEVER HEARD THE `INSURANCE' WORD

Thomas and Stephanie Sentina said they thought they had bought a retirement and investment plan from Met Life agent Ernest Ferrante two years ago.

"My husband just started his own business and we wanted to save for our children's college," said Stephanie Sentina, the mother of Thomas, 8, and Michael, 5.

"We specifically told Ferrante we did not want life insurance," she said. "We already had $200,000 in life insurance. We'd bought most of it from him."

The Staten Island couple said they paid $500 to Met Life each month. They said Ferrante had promised a 12 percent yield.

More than a year later, Thomas Sentina lost his business and wanted to liquidate his Met Life account - now up to $10,000 - to pay bills. When he contacted Ferrante, Thomas said, he was told it was impossible.

"Ferrante told us he put us into a life insurance policy because we were underinsured and it was what was best for our family. He said because it was in an insurance policy we couldn't access the money," Stephanie Sentina said.

That was the first time she had heard the word "insurance" in connection with the $500 a month. The Sentinas and hundreds of families like them are stark evidence that a burgeoning Met Life scandal that erupted in Florida may well have cost middle-class families hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Met Life, which has 16.7 million life-insurance policyholders in the United States, has offered to reimburse anyone misled into buying life insurances policies they believed were retirement or savings plans. The company estimates it will pay at least $30 million to 35,000 to 45,000 policyholders.

In October, Florida and other states launched a probe into questionable sales practices of Met Life agents, who typically earn 55 percent of first-year policy premiums.

This week the company, which earlier had admitted that some of its agents and employees sent out deceptive sales literature and used misleading sales techniques, terminated several executives, including a senior vice president, in connection with the scandal.

The deceptive sales practices initially were believed confined in Florida but the company has admitted they were widespread. More than a dozen states are investigating.