Georgia’s former insurance commissioner has begun a seven-year prison sentence.
Jim Beck was convicted in July on 37 counts involving a scheme to steal $2.5 million from an insurer he ran. Beck reported Thursday to a federal prison at Maxwell Air Force base in Montgomery, Alabama.
Gov. Brian Kemp swore in Beck’s successor John King as insurance commissioner. Kemp appointed King to serve as acting commissioner in 2019 after Beck was indicted several months after taking office.
King, the former police chief of Doraville, also serves as a major general in the Georgia National Guard. He is Georgia’s first Hispanic statewide officeholder.
Beck is the first Georgia statewide constitutional officer to face federal indictment since Linda Schrenko, who served eight years as Georgia’s elected superintendent of schools.
Schrenko was indicted in 2004, the year after her term ended. Prosecutors said she diverted federal funds while in office, spending the money on herself and on an unsuccessful run for governor. She pleaded guilty in 2006 to fraud and money laundering charges and was sentenced to federal prison. She was released in 2013.
GPB News contributed to this report
