Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Puzzling Fraudster Tricks

We've written before about would-be Moriarty's trying to scam insurance companies. Some, of course, are more successful than (the vast majority of) others:

"Judge rules Denver man who 'killed his wife' can use up to $500,000 from her life insurance to pay for his defense"

Others, well, not so much:

"California dad charged with insurance fraud after he drove off cliff, killing autistic sons"

But this one, courtesy of co-blogger Bob V, takes the (proverbial) cake:

"Boston man pretended brother was still alive, opened life insurance policies for him, in attempt to claim $5 million in benefits"

Yikes.

The first thing that strikes me is that total face amount. How does one purchase that much coverage, in what appears to be record time, without getting caught out? As we've mentioned before, life insurance underwriting, especially at that lofty level is going to require any number of physical and financial exams. And it gets even more weird (not to mention ironic):

"Investigators found witnesses in China that said Zheng’s brother died two to three years earlier of a sudden heart attack suffered on Tomb Sweeping Day."

Heh.

It's still not clear to me how the perp actually pulled this off. The story mentions that he'd renewed his (then-deceased) brother's driver's license, and used the deceased's bank accounts, but the actual mechanics go unreported.

Great job, MSM.

(Although, on second thought, maybe it's just as well)
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