April 6th, 2009

10 More Outrageous Insurance Frauds

We quickly realized only one top list wouldn’t going to be enough to expose all the best insurance frauds out there. So here are another ten good examples of real live people in their crazy attempts to get rich on insurance money.

10. Aaron Brabson takes insurers for wheelchair ride

After a car accident in 2001, Texas native Aaron Brabson moved to Virginia to forget the awful event. When signing up for insurance in the new state Brabson however claimed he had been in yet another accident that had paralyzed him waist down. He had now also started using a wheelchair to reinforce the alledged injury from the accident.

While both these accidents actually had happened, Brudson had successfully recovered and was not at all confined to a life in a wheelchair. In fact he took dates on mountain bike rides and trained for a Triathlon regularly.

The scheme came to an end when a friend of his spotted him standing in line in a store. When confronted with his obvious ability to stand and move, Brudson insisted his friend had mistaken him for his twin brother.

9. Isabel Parker – The Slip and Fall Con Artist

Isabel Parker is an 72 year old woman who has a gambling problem. Deep in debt, Parker needs more money to lose so she does what any desperate granny would do:  Fakes a number of slip and fall injuries in super markets and convenient stores to claim insurance money. And it works to;  getting her hands on nearly $500,000 before getting caught and convicted, Parker must have given the slip and fall move some serious thought.

8. Michael Schook – The blabbing arsonist

Convinced that he could pull of a fraudulent insurance claim on his home by burning it down, Connecticut resident Michael Schook just had to tell his friends about it. Before he knew it, word had spread and at least one third of the town population had heard about Schook’s plans.

But that did not stop Schook and a couple of weeks later his house was burning. Months after collecting $82,000 in insurance money, at least three people voluntarily came forward to tell about Shook’s plan.

7. Rex DeGeorge on a sinking ship

Wealthy lawyer Rex DeGorge buys a yacht for $1.2 million, takes it to Italy and tries to sink it to collect his policy on $3.5 million. The only problem is that DeGorge cannot seem to get the yacht to sink. After several hours of desperately attempting to seek the ship, he was finally discovered by the Italian coastguard.

6. Illegal Meth lab explosion - $40,000 in workers comp

When Santa Ana’s finest Richard Marinez blows up his illegal meth lab,and burnt himself severely in the process, Marinez figured somebody owes him some compensation. Seeing as drug manufacturers hardly have any safety net for these kinds of accidents, Marinez said it happened at his mother’s bakery and goes on to claim over $40,000 in workers compensation. What nerve!

5. Return of the Disguised Boyfriend

In 2005 Clayton Daniels and his wife Molly came up with a genius plan. In order to be able to collect a $110,000 in life-insurance policy in Daniel’s name he had to die. As death was out of the question, they dug up the body of a deceased old woman, dressed her in Daniels’ cloths, sat her in his truck, caught it on fire, and pushed it off the cliff. So far so good, the plan seemed to be working.

A couple of weeks later Daniels’ comes back from the dead, but in disguise. Having grown a cartoon villian like moustache and wearing a baseball cap, Clayton is confident no known will recognize him.

The lack of skidmarks around the scene of the accident and the fact that the fire in the truck was started by charcoal lightning fluid and not gasoline finally unveiled this insurance scheme.

4. The Finger in The Chilli

In January 2006 Las Vegas couple Anna Ayala and Jaime Placencia were sentenced to nine and fourteen years in prison after pleading guilty of placing a severed finger in a meal of chilli at a Wendy’s restaurant in San Jose. The point, of course, being to fleece Wendy’s insurance. The ordeal got massive media attention and has become a true urban legend. This fraud ended up costing Ayala and Placencia $21 million in reimbursements to the franchise restaurant. During the time of the finger incident, Wendy’s stated a $50,000 reward for anyone who could help explain where the severed limb came from. No one came forward.

3. The Hit-and-Run Grannies

The woman in the photo is not any of the referred grannies

Two elderly women were arrested in 2006 in rural Los Angeles accused for feeding, housing, insuring and, eventually, running over numerous homeless men. This scheme worked for many years and the grandmas had $2 million in collected life insurance money before they finally were caught and convicted.

What their purpose was is still unclear - for love of money or hate of homeless people?

2. H. H. Holmes – Business man/Serial killer

Dr. Henry Howard Holmes is known to most as American first serial killer and/or the owner of Murder Castle. But this man is also an insurance fraudster as he killed not only to feed a psychopathic need for blood but to collect life insurance policies of his victims. Opening “Murder Castle” as a hotel for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, Holmes was constructing the most horrific insurance scheme in U.S history. Holmes forced female employees to take out life insurance policies, then killing them and collecting the money.

1. Nub City – A horrific insurance story

The small Florida community of Vernon, 780 residents, became known as Nub City in the 70s once one of the greatest insurance frauds was unveiled. During the prior decades, Vernon inhabitants had deliberately been shooting off their hands, feet and arms and reported them as accidents to claim insurance money. Most of these limb deprived people actually got away with it and sacrificed a body part to become rich. Others were sent to prison. Nearly 30 years later, director Earl Morris decided to make a horror movie based on this bizarre event.

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