Ha. These are the schemes that make great movies and great
television show plots. Here are some of those we've seen.
- Crooks will take out an insurance policy on themselves
and then fake their own death. How does that happen? Most of
them travel to another country and then support their death
claim with fraudulent documents. Very few are successful
because insurance companies routinely investigate all
foreign death claims.
- A somewhat recent case involved a man who wanted to
disappear from the radar screen because he didn't want to go
to jail. It seemed so much easier to die, at least on paper,
so he and his wife went to a pauper's cemetery and dug up a
recently buried body. They put the body into the husband's
car, drenched the whole thing in gasoline, then pushed it
over a cliff. The car and body was burned beyond
recognition, and the widow said, "oh my, it was my dear
husband because he never came home last night and that was
our car ..." She promptly buried the charred remains of her
husband and filed a life insurance claim. Relatives got
suspicious when she quickly found a new boyfriend who
looking strikingly similar to her dead husband. The Police
launched an investigation and the scam was discovered. Both
are currently serving well-deserved jail sentences.
- Too often people really do die. Wives kill (or
hire it out) husbands and husbands kill wives. Children kill
parents and parents kill children. All for the proceeds of
an insurance policy.
Stay tuned to our
Gotcha page. The
life insurance frauds make good reading.