A wave of people viaticated their life-insurance policies when confronted with such a gruesome and fatal virus. Some came into enormous sums of cash. Many are alive today because of protease inhibitors. Those who viaticated their policies and continue to live with HIV do so knowing that investors have long waited to collect on their deaths.

The advertisements for viatical settlements in the ’80s and ’90s usually depicted a singular demographic: white men, usually fit or buff, looking perfectly well. “Exercise your options,” reads one advertisement, accompanied by a bodybuilder lifting the world above his head. Some of the ads conveyed a sense of serenity, showing a park bench or a nature scene. Others appealed to the financial concerns stemming from exorbitant medical expenses. One ad in a 1996 issue of The Advocate markets the settlements as “cash infusion therapy,” promising “an immediate cure for one of the most damaging side effects of AIDS ... financial devastation.”

A smaller number of viatical advertisements pictured men on vacation, hanging out on a tropical beach and watching the sun set. “Distant lands to see. Goals to achieve. Spirit to rejuvenate,” reads one advertisement from Legacy Benefits, a viatical-settlement brokerage. The message is clear: Enjoy life now.

Sean Strub’s health was in stark contrast with that of the strapping men in those advertisements when he began viaticating life-insurance policies in the mid-1990s. “I was a skeletal 125 pounds, 6’1, covered in purple Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions,” he says. “Anyone looking at me assumed I didn’t have long to live.” Strub, a writer and activist, says he viaticated three life-insurance policies, collecting 93 percent of the death benefit on a $150,000 policy, 70 percent on a policy for $300,000, and around 50 percent on a $20,000 policy. He used the money to start POZ magazine.

POZ at first generated much of its revenue through advertising similar settlements to the one Strub had entered into, so he became acquainted with a few people who worked in the viatical industry. “Some were a step from con artists, jumping into an unregulated, emerging, high-profit financial sector,” he says. Many flaunted a get-rich-quick attitude. Strub says he once met a buyer who never consulted doctors about the life expectancy of the policyholders. Instead, according to Strub, the buyer claimed he could “look in their eyes and get a sense of how long they will be around.”

Debt after death

The industry did have its bright spots, Strub notes: “There also were people who were great, particularly the brokers, who tried to get as much money for the policyholder as possible and enabled many people to realize a dream—buying a home, starting a business, whatever—or to significantly improve their last years, months, or days.”