Insurance fraud is a rampant and costly form of financial thievery, and it drains more than $50 billion from insurers every year, according to the FBI. And while these scams often involve theft, murder and duplicitous actions, they also involve imbeciles.
After glancing through decades’ worth of headlines, Insurance Business America is bringing you our favorite in financial fools.
6. Hindered by Hannah Montana
Connecticut prison guard Garrett Dalton was willing to do just about anything to stay at home and collect workers’ compensation benefits—except stay off the television, apparently.
During a radio station-sponsored contest, Dalton was spotted in an “egg in a spoon” race, dressed in a woman’s wig, dress and high heels. The objective? Scoring tickets to a Hannah Montana concert.
5. The only good men are fictional
When Jim Davis died, he was so unlamented that four California women had to pay actors to pose as mourners. Of course, that may have had more to do with the fact that Jim Davis never existed.
Former mortuary worker Jean Crump, along with Faye Shilling, Barbara Ann Lynn and Lydia Eileen Pearce invented Davis, faked his death and then put on a fraudulent funeral—all to secure a $1.2 million life insurance benefit.
The women had real reason to mourn after two insurance companies launched an investigation into the claim.
4. Conveniently placed cookware
Wyoming resident Nicholas Di Puma had it all planned it all out—he would torch both his home and his car in order to reap insurance benefits. Logistically, however, things didn’t go so smoothly.
According to the story Di Puma told police, he was at home when the fire began. While he was cooking steak, the pans caught on fire. He tried to extinguish the blaze with a rag, then throwing out the pan, which conveniently landed in the rear seat of his convertible.
On his way to the second pan, he tripped, propelling the cookware onto the couch.
Delaware County officials were not convinced.
3. Lost and found
Note to aspiring insurance fraudsters: When you report your car as stolen, don’t keep driving it.
That’s the lesson Suliman Kamara learned in 2009 after collecting nearly $10,000 from
Liberty Mutual for his stolen automobile. Three years later, however, a representative from the insurance company spotted the car parked outside his home.
The entirety of Kamara’s precautionary measures consisted of changing his old license plate for a new one.
2. “A” for auto theft
Monthly car payments can be taxing on a high school teacher’s salary. Unfortunately for Houston resident Tramesha Lashon Fox, her expertise was chemistry—not fraud.
Fox gave two failing students passing grades in exchange for stealing and torching her Chevy Malibu to collect the money. Fox lost both her car and her job, sealing the deal with a 90-day jail sentence.
1. Death and a dye job
Facing jail time for sexual assault, Clayton Daniels enlisted the help of his wife, Molly. Together, they dug up the grave of Charlotte Davis, dressed her in Clayton’s clothes, put her body in a car and pushed it off a cliff.
They hoped the body would be sufficiently burned to resemble Clayton, and planned to collect $110,000 in benefits. They weren’t counting on DNA tests, however.
Molly went to jail for 30 years, while Clayton is looking at a sentence of no less than 35 years for his combined infractions.
