The U.S. Department of Labor has obtained a court order appointing Jacqueline Carmichael as independent fiduciary of the abandoned 401(k) plan of defunct Project Solutions of Rochester Inc., the department said this week.
Carmichael of JM Pension Advisory was appointed by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. She will manage the plan and distribute its assets to plan participants and beneficiaries, then terminate the plan, department officials said.
The order resolves a lawsuit the department filed in December.
Project Solutions, which did business as Project Solutions Inc., was owned by Earl Shepherd, who was the sole trustee and fiduciary of the 401(k) plan. Shepherd abandoned the plan in 2006, department officials said in a statement.
The plan was established for the benefit of the company’s employees and was funded in part by withholdings from employee paychecks, department officials said.
“When an employee benefit plan is abandoned, so are the workers who invested in it,” said Jean Ackerman, regional director for the Department of Employee Benefits Security Administration in Boston, Mass., which is part of the Labor Department.
“We took this legal action to ensure that the plan is properly managed so that its participants can finally gain access to their retirement assets,” Ackerman said.
(c) 2010 Rochester Business Journal. To obtain permission to reprint this article, call 585-546-8303 or e-mail service@rbj.net.
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