The 2017 proceeding that sought to revoke the producer licenses of Mr. Rapo and Rapo & Jepsen ended in January 2025 with no penalty and no revocation.
In April 2017, Agency Checklists reported that the Division of Insurance had docketed an Order to Show Cause seeking to revoke the insurance producer licenses of John J. Rapo and his agency, Rapo & Jepsen Insurance Services, Inc., a well-known insurance agency serving an immigrant customer base, and to impose the maximum statutory fines. We said we would follow it. A reader asked last week what became of the matter. The short answer is that the Division dropped it.
According to an April 2025 post by his defense counsel, Joshua Lewin of Prince Lobel Tye LLP, the Division withdrew the case in January 2025, and it ended without any penalty to Mr. Rapo. Counsel’s statement emphasized that Mr. Rapo denied the allegations from the outset and never wavered, that the defense challenged every part of the Division’s case, and that no witness ever came forward to substantiate the claims against him.
What the case was about
The 2017 license proceeding grew out of Arbella’s earlier cancellation of Rapo & Jepsen’s commercial exclusive-representative-producer contract, which Arbella had cancelled on allegations of premium fraud in the way certain commercial automobile policies were written. It was an administrative licensing matter before the Division — not a criminal case. Notably, the Division’s seven-page complaint rested substantially on the record Arbella had assembled and presented in the CAR Market Review Committee proceedings.
Where things stood by the time it closed
By the time the case ended, much had changed. Mr. Rapo, as president, signed Articles of Voluntary Dissolution for Rapo & Jepsen that the Secretary of the Commonwealth accepted in March 2018. The agency’s commercial book had already passed, in 2016, to Point Insurance — a successor agency that remains in business today. Mr. Rapo’s individual producer license appears in the licensing records as inactive; it was never revoked, because only a completed adjudication could have revoked it.
Division Retained Authority to Pursue Enforcement
None of that forced the Division’s hand. Under M.G.L. c. 175, § 162R(e), the Commissioner keeps the authority to pursue an enforcement matter and to impose penalties even after a license has been surrendered or has lapsed by operation of law — so neither the dissolution nor the inactive license was a bar to going forward. The Division could have pressed the complaint to a final decision. After seven years, it apparently chose not to and closed the matter without any rulings or stipulations.
Case Closed Without Penalties or Findings
This update is based on the public records available to the author and on the April 2025 public statement of Mr. Rapo’s counsel; the author has not independently obtained the Division of Insurance’s docket disposition.
Sources: Agency Checklists (Apr. 4, 2017); the April 14, 2025 statement of Prince Lobel Tye LLP; the Articles of Voluntary Dissolution of Rapo & Jepsen Insurance Services, Inc., filed with the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth (Mar. 6, 2018); Massachusetts public insurance-producer licensing records; and M.G.L. c. 175, § 162R and c. 30A, § 13.
