Talaat asked the US ambassador for the list of Armenians insured by American companies, and 89 years later New York Life paid $20 million to their heirs

Before 1915 New York Life sold life policies to Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Martin Marootian's uncle, Setrak Cheytanian, bought one, paid the premium every year, and gave it to Marootian's mother before he was killed in the genocide. In Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, published in 1918, the US ambassador Henry Morgenthau writes that Interior Minister Talaat asked him to get the American life insurance companies to send a complete list of their Armenian policy holders. Talaat said they were practically all dead, had left no heirs, and the money should go to the state. Morgenthau refused and left. In November 1999 Marootian and 12 other plaintiffs sued New York Life in Los Angeles. A California law had extended the deadline for such claims to 2010, and US District Judge Christina A. Snyder upheld it in 2001. In January 2004 the company agreed to a $20 million settlement covering more than 2,000 policies, with $3 million to nine Armenian civic organizations. California's insurance commissioner, John Garamendi, appointed board members to decide claims. Marootian died at his San Diego home in 2011, aged 95.