Here are a few of the WORST cases of insurance fraud!
10 - Causing More Damage Adam Haddard, a mechanic in Massachusetts,
called himself the doctor of the collision industry.
He had a body shop that was supposed to fix damage to his customers' vehicles.
However, Haddard was doctoring the documents he used to scam his customers and the insurance
companies.
Whenever a vehicle came in with damage, he would damage it more to inflate the claim
made to the insurance company.
He would rip the companies off and also charge the customer for the extra damage.
He was caught after an investigation opened in 2017, and surveillance footage of the crime
was found on his cameras.
It showed Haddard going around his shop with different objects hitting the vehicles.
Not only was he charging for all this extra stuff, but in some cases, he didn't even fix
the damage that he caused.
Haddard made away with $170,000 from his scam before he was caught and convicted.
He is serving six months of a two-and-a-half-year sentence on these charges while also serving
eight months for a separate payroll tax scam.
This makes us wonder, why wouldn’t he just delete the footage from his own security cameras,
you know since he’s committing a giant scam?!
9 - Lend Me A Hand Three men in Sumter, South Carolina, proved
the lengths some people would go to for money.
One night after some alcohol, of course, David Player, Gerald Hardin, and Michael Weaver
hatched a brilliant idea.
They would remove Weaver's arm with a chainsaw and file an insurance claim saying they were
working as tree cutters when it happened.
Yes, this is a true story!
They rushed Weaver to the emergency room, but the Doctors couldn't reattach his arm.
After filing, the trio made off with over $600,000 for the price of an arm.
Player was considered the "Mastermind" behind this plot, but his plan doesn't exactly scream
brilliance.
During the investigation, Player showed no remorse and lied about where the $600,000
insurance money went.
Hardin got a much lighter sentence for his cooperation with the police.
The "mastermind" was also ordered to pay it all back in restitution.
David Player and Gerald Hardin were sentenced in May of 2008 to 14 years and 3 years, respectively.
They were convicted of what Judge Cameron Currie called "the most aggravated case of
fraud he had ever seen."
Weaver’s IQ apparently is between 54 and 65 and sadly, was dependent on Player.
In return, Player betrayed Weaver for a quick buck.
8 - Calculating Landlord Life insurance fraud isn't reserved for those
faking their death.
In fact, a Floridian woman figured out a whole new way to go about it.
Joyce Small was a landlord in Florida who owned property up and down the east coast.
She had lots of tenants and presumably was doing okay financially.
It's not completely clear why she felt the need to begin her scheme, but she almost made
$2 million off of it.
Joyce was unique and a bit dark in her approach.
She obtained personal information from all of her tenants using their applications.
She would then choose who she thought was the most likely to kick the bucket.
Whether it was because of health conditions or just old age, Joyce looked for people she
could exploit.
Once she chose her victims, she would take out life insurance policies spread across
eight different insurance companies.
Then, she'd wait.
Just five of her victims passed away, and she made over $200,000.
If all 29 of her targets had passed, Joyce stood to gain almost $2 million.
7 - Supposed Employers In 2018, in a little town in the Western Cape
Province of Africa, a woman finally hit the jackpot.
The young mother of two named Hlompho Mohapi was going to a new airport job.
Strangely, to get the job, she had to pass a blood test.
With her future seemingly on the rise, Mohapi never considered that this would be the last
job she ever drove to.
Her would-be employers Melisizwe Monqo, Siphosihle Pamba, and Phumlani Qhusheka, weren’t there
to give her a job.
They instead traded her life for a big payday that eventually led right back to them.
The trio used her blood samples and personal information to take out life insurance policies
on the victim worth almost $2 million.
Anyone that's ever seen a network crime drama knows the first thing police do is check life
insurance policyholders for a motive.
Once her body was found near Herolds Bay, it didn't take long for them to get caught.
They were found guilty of multiple charges that included murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy
to commit murder.
To make matters worse, this wasn't the first time they'd done this.
They attempted to kill another victim in Eastern Cape Province and had policies out on two
more women without their knowledge.
They haven't been sentenced yet, but they won't likely taste freedom again with all
their charges.
6 - Get Me a Body In 2011 a dead body was discovered on the
roadside near a small Moldovan village in Eastern Europe.
It was identified as Igor Vorotinov and ruled to be death by heart attack.
His wife, Irina, who lived in Minnesota, was the beneficiary of his life insurance policy
and received a check for over $2 million.
Nothing seemed extraordinary about the case until 2013 when the FBI got a tip that Igor
faked his death.
Igor had been living under the false name "Nikoly Patoka '' in Moldova.
Irina got someone to open up an account to cash the check and began transferring money
in her adult son Alkon's name.
They transferred around $1.5 million to accounts in both Moldova and Switzerland.
Alkon and his fiance were grabbed outside an airport in Detroit by the FBI after returning
from Moldova.
They seized his laptop, and after attaining a warrant, they searched through it.
The investigators found pictures of the supposedly dead Igor dated after his death.
With this evidence, they began arresting the family, and they all pleaded guilty.
Irina received 37 months in prison for the crimes of mail fraud and illegal transactions.
Alkon got 3 years of probation for his involvement in the plot.
The mastermind himself, Igor, was sentenced to 41 months in prison for mail fraud.
However, the question remains: what is the true identity of that dead body in Moldova?
Did the Vorotinovs take this man's life to perpetuate their fraud?
5 - Cow Parts + a Mannequin "I have never seen a fraud quite like this
one before."
That's what Special Assistant US Attorney Grant Gelberg said about one woman's master
plan to steal millions.
Jean Crump used to be a mortician before she became a con artist looking to scam insurance
companies.
She used her previously gained knowledge to create fake death certificates for fictional
people and send them in for claims.
Her schemes were rather elaborate and involved multiple people, some props, and even an occasional
fire.
One day, Jim Davis, a divorced contractor from Los Angeles, died peacefully in his home.
His funeral was full of tears as friends and family surrounded his casket.
However, the coffin was empty... and Jim Davis never actually existed.
"Jim Davis" is a character created by Crump to perpetuate her scheme.
She even held a mock funeral and buried a weighed-down casket to add to her plan's validity.
Her scheme worked, at first.
Crump cashed in on a $315,000 life insurance policy, although she was aiming for $1.2 Million.
Her accomplices Faye Shilling and Christine Alexander were arrested with Crump as her
house of cards fell down.
The investigation was started by the insurance companies and eventually led to a pretty open-and-shut
case.
The FBI had secret surveillance footage of Crump that stopped her at every lie she tried
to tell.
Alexander testified against Crump in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
She said that she posed as Jim Davis' niece to try and collect the money for his death.
When Crump thought the authorities were getting close, she exhumed the coffin, filled it with
cow parts and a mannequin, and then cremated it.
Shilling confessed to two counts of wire fraud and was sentenced to two years in prison.
Two others also confessed to being part of Crump's fake funeral team.
Crump herself was sentenced to 18 months in prison and was ordered to pay the $315,000
back in restitution.
4 - The Inside Job We've seen a lot of fraudulent crimes committed
by policyholders, but what happens when the insurance agents themselves become infatuated
with money?
Four criminals from Southern California found out the hard way when they were arrested on
charges of fraud.
Mohammed Kakooza, Margret Birabwa, Michael Monday, and Denis Osikol were life insurance
agents and came together in a scam worth almost $2 million dollars.
They used one of the oldest tricks in the book and attracted their would-be victims
with a deal.
They created a referral program where people got money for bringing their friends and family
to one of these agents.
Using these victims' personal information, the four submitted false insurance documents
to obtain their commission.
Their scheme netted them $1.9 Million in commissions from more than 600 fraudulent insurance policy
submissions.
3 - The Hitman The arrest of a daughter in a drug-dealing
family led to the deaths of two people and a 25-year cold case.
Ana Mejia was arrested in 1994, just a week before her ultimate demise.
Ana was taken from her home, where $130,000 in cash and plenty of drugs were found.
Her own mother, Dolores Morgan, and brother, Ted Connors, had decided that Ana might talk
to police so they thought that something had to be done.
Ted and his best friend, Jose Carrero, went over to her home, where she and her two children
were present.
They left the two children unharmed, but Ana wasn’t so lucky.
They disposed of her body in New Jersey.
Carrero also testified that five months later, Dolores called him into the kitchen to have
another meeting.
She told Carrero that her husband, Nicholas Connors, wasn’t happy with the investigation
into Ana's death.
He was going to hire a private investigator to figure out what had actually happened.
She promised Carrero $50,000
The two carried out their plan and framed it as a robbery.
The next step in Dolores's plan was to collect the $200,000 life insurance policy on her
late husband and flee to the Dominican Republic with her son and his, at the time, girlfriend.
Police quoted her as saying, "We already have two deaths on our hands.
We can't afford another.
We can't afford the police snooping around our house again."
They returned to the states and moved to Florida, where they lived unbothered until 2017, when
the case was re-opened.
With the evidence investigators found and the confession of Carrero, the mother and
son duo were arrested in February of 2020.
After a roller-coaster trial, everyone waited for the jury's verdict.
However, they couldn't agree.
No matter how many times they were sent back, they always came to the same conclusion.
The judge had to call a mistrial, and the pair's lawyers asked for their client's release.
The case is still moving through the court system, with Carrero serving as the prosecution's
star witness.
2 - Accidental Drowning On December 16th in 2000, two friends, Jerry
Williams and Brian Winchester, headed out to Lake Seminole for some early morning duck
hunting.
Unfortunately for Jerry, he never made it home, leaving his wife, Denise Williams, a
widow.
His body was never discovered, and his disappearance was ruled as accidental drowning.
However, Denise's brother-in-law, David Mcraine, a Tallahassee detective, and Jerry's mother
never believed his death was accidental.
After Jerry's death, his widow collected a life insurance policy on him and married Winchester.
Only Denise and Brian knew what really happened to Jerry that cold morning out on the lake.
Sixteen years later, Brian Winchester was arrested for kidnapping Denise at gunpoint
during a messy divorce.
When brought into the police station, Denise believed she would be interviewed about her
abduction, but the questioning quickly turned on her.
Detective Mcraine came in and began asking her questions about her husband's disappearance.
He believed that Winchester had hurt Jerry and was going to hurt Denise so she wouldn't
talk.
Little did he know that the whole case was about to turn upside down.
When Winchester was questioned, he told a new story where he and Denise plotted against
Jerry to collect the insurance money.
He agreed to testify against Denise and tell them where Jerry's body was.
With this evidence, she was convicted and sentenced to 30 years.
1 - Miscommunication One man owed more than he could pay back and
decided to play a dangerous game with his life, and no, this isn't the beginning of
Squid Game.
In South China's Hunan Province, a man named Mr. He died when he crashed a borrowed car
into a river.
The authorities searched but couldn't find his body anywhere.
He left behind a wife and two young children.
When his wife found out, she took the news hard.
Soon after, she left a heartbreaking note for her friends on WeChat.
They'd agreed to leave the world together, and that plan was still in effect.
Mr. He showed up at a police station on October 12th to turn himself in for faking his own
death.
His reasons were to escape gambling debt and collect the insurance money.
It was there that he discovered his wife took her own life and the lives of their children
by jumping into a pond.
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