What about those insurance links?

What about those insurance links?

By Mikkel Pates

Agweek Staff Writer

ROSHOLT, S.D. -- Neighbors and others trying to make sense of the Larsen/Braaten theft story wonder about the insurance connection.

Some wonder if Larsen may have may have handled his own insurance policy.

Not true, Larsen says.

Larsen sold insurance in the 1970s for the Rosholt Bank and let the license expire while he farmed for 17 years.

When he went to work at the State Bank of Wheaton in Minnesota in 1993, the bank wanted him to have a property and casualty license so he could sell crop/hail insurance through its Donnelly Insurance Co., an agency owned by the bank located in its building. Bruce Barker, another agent in the agency, handled his blanket farm insurance policy (including theft) from State Auto Insurance. The policy was a derivative of one he'd started years earlier in South Dakota.

Filing a claim

When theft was discovered, Larsen called Barker to file a claim.

Initially, the company denied the theft.

Larsen says he had to get attorneys involved in the payment, even though Braaten pled guilty.

"I fought the insurance company, and when you fight the insurance company you lose a large portion of what the restitution comes to," Larsen says.

Larsen declines to reveal the amount of the payment, pursuant to a confidentiality agreement.

"All I can say is that it's been resolved."