As NC billionaire seeks a Trump pardon, a victim says effects of fraud linger

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Debbie Griffiths worked in healthcare her entire life, saving more than $600,000 for her retirement.

Then she saw it all disappear.

She is one of 100,000 people across 47 states who had their money misused by Durham billionaire Greg Lindberg.

A federal jury found Lindberg, now 56, guilty of trying to bribe North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey. Lindberg wanted favorable treatment of his company as he orchestrated an insurance scheme that prosecutors said allowed him to siphon $2 billion from insurance companies, supporting a lavish lifestyle that included yachts, jets and women.

Lindberg pleaded guilty in the insurance fraud case, but hasn’t shown signs of stopping the fight. A recent lobbying disclosure form shows that Lindberg continues to pay advisers, including former Trump Organization staffers, to appeal for a presidential pardon.

In the meantime, Lindberg is in a federal prison in Georgia. The News & Observer was not able to reach Lindberg by email or through an attorney.

McClatchy spoke to three victims who offered to share their stories, but within 24 hours, one withdrew and another said he would not be willing to be named in an article over his fear of litigation from Lindberg.

Griffiths, seven months after getting every penny back, is ready to tell her story.

To fund her education and achieve her lifelong aspiration of working as a nurse, Griffiths labored in the fast food industry for years. The Georgia native worked in a hospital for a decade and later earned an opportunity that quickly became her passion: directing other nurses in an assisted living facility.

Over time, Griffiths came to own her own retirement home. She managed the 102-bed facility, with 70 employees and elderly residents, who she called “our greatest natural resource.”

Two decades in, due to health and other reasons, she decided to sell her business, retire and move with her husband further north in Georgia.

Griffiths then employed a financial adviser who recommended purchasing annuities.

In November 2018, she purchased two five-year guaranteed annuities through Lindberg’s company valued at $616,000. In five years, she was supposed to get back $740,000.

“Well, I didn’t even know what an annuity was … but I trusted (the adviser) and took his advice,” she said. “ … We’re not frivolous. We don’t spend a lot of money. We live within our means, and I remember well what my parents taught me about the value of respect and honesty. So, when you think about all that, where I came from, and then the fact that I trusted somebody I really didn’t know here locally … I did what I thought was right.”

Griffiths couldn’t help but hear a small voice inside her telling her something was wrong about the annuities.

It was nearly two years before she got the truth. Her worries weren’t confirmed until a different adviser, one whose aunt had lived at Griffiths’ retirement community, took a look for himself.

He told Griffiths the annuities were in receivership. She asked if that meant Lindberg’s company had gone bankrupt.

“He said, ‘Well, it’s very similar to that,’” Griffiths recalled. “I cannot even articulate truthfully the distress that my husband and I felt at that moment. I just wept because I didn’t know which way to turn.”

For years, Griffiths couldn’t access her funds. The courts froze the accounts and deemed them compromised until they could be reviewed.

Griffiths has a son and grandchildren, and said “there were experiences we felt like we were missing out on” because of the vanished money.

“Let’s face it. Time is your greatest commodity, your greatest resource, and when we can’t even get to what we’ve earned honestly and respectfully …” she said. “And it’s a guy like this, and we’re sitting here looking and watching from the backside, how he is living the life of luxury, doing everything he wants to do, and the hardship. The turmoil. The abuse.”

The pain and suffering that came with being defrauded was “indescribable,” Griffiths said. She wondered most days how she and her husband would manage both financially and emotionally, and she finds trusting others difficult now.

“When somebody does this to you, it’s like going into your house and taking your stuff away,” she said. “And then you walk back in and it’s gone, and you don’t even know which way to turn.”

Griffiths then began reading online articles, staying as close to the case as she could and learning more about investing than she ever thought she would, particularly as a retiree.

Another unexpected silver lining? A support group of fellow victims.

Griffiths said she made strong online connections with others who were affected by insurance fraud — the majority of them affected by Lindberg — and established “a mini support group.” The group included victims in Texas, Massachusetts, Tennessee and North Carolina.

Griffiths said the group members would individually ask each other how they were handling the fight to get their money back and shared financial advice between them.

“We were all in pain and frustrated with how long it took,” she said of restoring the frozen funds. “Thank goodness for the internet in a case like this, that I was able to communicate.”

In December 2025, on Griffiths’ husband’s 77th birthday, “we actually got every penny of our money back.”

Griffiths said despite being on top of it all, writing letters, speaking with attorneys, “it didn’t consume me. I did not let it.”

“I never gave up, kept fighting and I lived my life to the fullest,” she said.

Since Griffiths was a detail-oriented business owner, and “kept every paper, every signature, dotted every ‘I’ and crossed every ‘T,’” she said, she wrote a very detailed impact statement that “was exactly how I felt and what was going on.”

“I truly kept praying – Lord, make something good come out of something bad, and the good is the growth that I experienced,” she said. “I can help other people … I learned so much from it. And, you know what? I’m better because of it.”

Lindberg in May was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison, minus four years of time already served, according to previous Charlotte Observer reporting.

Is that enough? “Absolutely not,” Griffiths said, considering his “egregious exploitation of senior citizens.”

“I just could not put my head around it, and I still cannot, but I do feel compelled … to speak on behalf of those that were abused and stressed, and truthfully, some of those who died during that time and never got money back,” she said.

Griffiths isn’t the only victim who shared her story.

More than 1,500 victims wrote impact statements to the court to help a judge decide how to sentence Lindberg.

Their stories, written in publicly available court documents, came from widowers, veterans, teachers, laborers and businessmen.

The judge heard stories about a 93-year-old man who died without ever seeing his life savings returned.

And the mother who no longer had access to her money when her son was killed and needed to be buried and his children taken care of.

Stories like the Wisconsin man who wasn’t able to use his $671,000 — his life savings — to pay for his daughter’s cancer treatments.

Or the husband who learned his wife had a rare form of Parkinson’s disease, so planned with her to check off her bucket list items before she slipped into a coma. They didn’t get their money back from Lindberg in time.

Some victims said they didn’t know if they could pay for cancer treatments; some faced new diagnoses from the stress. Some turned to therapy, others to religion.

Court documents written by a federal prosecutor and Department of Justice employees stated that Lindberg’s victims “were middle class folks who wanted a safe place to put their hard-earned retirement savings.”

“They did not or could not afford to risk their savings on speculative stocks or trendy funds at the mercy of markets,” the court documents state. “Rather they chose annuities, which gave smaller but reliable interest rate returns, and believed their money was ‘guaranteed’ to be safe under the law.”

The court documents further state that the people drawn to Lindberg’s annuities “needed their money to be safe because if it was lost, they faced becoming dependent on public assistance, charity, or the grace of their families.”

But the state’s then-insurance commissioner, Wayne Goodwin, allowed Lindberg’s company to move assets around to affiliated companies at a rate of 40%, well above the normal 10% cap for other companies. And that money went to Lindberg. Lindberg also donated money to political parties and campaigns, including Goodwin’s reelection campaign. Goodwin was never charged with any wrongdoing.

Lindberg used the funds to support an extravagant lifestyle that included efforts to extend his life to the age of 120, while many of his victims faced cancer diagnoses or end-of-life care decisions without their life savings they entrusted to him.

Past purchases also include a 200-foot luxury yacht and private planes. He also fathered at least 9 surrogate children around the same age.

Lindberg and Ken Barnes, a lawyer who Lindberg has retained, did not respond to requests from McClatchy.

Barnes this month petitioned a court for a decision in which “no restitution is owed.” Based on a preliminary order, Lindberg owes around $1.7 billion in restitution.

On Thursday, a special master figuring out Lindberg’s restitution lowered the amount by $39 million.

Lindberg hasn’t stopped fighting.

In addition to regularly flooding the courts with new filings, he’s also hired lobbyists to appeal to President Donald Trump for a pardon, something both North Carolina senators have adamantly opposed.

This month, George Sorial, the former executive vice president of The Trump Organization, filed a lobbying disclosure — the fifth quarterly report showing payments from Lindberg to the company to push for a presidential pardon.

If Lindberg receives clemency from Trump, it wouldn’t protect him from charges at the state level. Wiley Nickel, who is set to become Wake County’s district attorney, said he will launch an investigation into Lindberg on possible state charges if he’s pardoned.

Griffiths said that if Trump decides to pardon Lindberg, “I would be extremely upset.”

“I cannot fathom that our president would do that, and I just have respect for him to think that he wouldn’t do it,” she said. “ … If he’s able to get out and do all this, then that’s a license to steal for anybody who wants to do it.”

This story was originally published July 28, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline “As NC billionaire seeks a Trump pardon, a victim says effects of fraud linger.”