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The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

texasmonthly.com

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Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#61

Post by owlninja »

pottertheotter wrote: post #8
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #3

I don't want to read a novel before being able to understand what this is about. At least the article could provide a quick glimpse at what the fraud scheme is. I kept reading for 5-6 minutes and then lost interest.

There's too many articles like this these days. I don't mind reading longform, but I've mostly given up on the format because of this issue.

Texas Monthly has been doing this for a long time. I personally like saving them for when I have a little downtime as they are usually very well done.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#62

Post by fny »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #49

I gotta say, ditching a small airplane 30 miles off shore in the Gulf of Mexico is a hell of a risky way to collect $50,000 in an insurance payout. You've got a lot of faith in your ability to make a "water landing", much less that someone comes out and gets you before something goes wrong.

Sounds like a hell of a lot more fun than setting a house on fire.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#63

Post by antihero »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #49

I gotta say, ditching a small airplane 30 miles off shore in the Gulf of Mexico is a hell of a risky way to collect $50,000 in an insurance payout. You've got a lot of faith in your ability to make a "water landing", much less that someone comes out and gets you before something goes wrong.

Could you not call in a mayday?

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#64

Post by antihero »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #39
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #3

I don't want to read a novel before being able to understand what this is about. At least the article could provide a quick glimpse at what the fraud scheme is. I kept reading for 5-6 minutes and then lost interest.

No joke. 4 out of 5 times I open a news article on HN it is some kind of novella I have no interest in. In our age of short time spans and competition for attention you would think news magazines would be concise and to the point, I would even say, lapidary. But for some reason they became an outlet for graphomania?

Have you considered reddit? Or possibly 9gag?

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#65

Post by giarc »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #31
dkarp wrote: post #28

5 years seems like such a small penalty. He was an international arms dealer and from the sounds of it selling weapons to countries that it was illegal to sell weapons to. Who knows what those weapons were used for.

But I think he wasn’t convicted for that? (Not sure why.)

I think its a common situation where you have to decide between crimes with long sentences, but hard to prove and smaller charges that are easier to prove.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#66

Post by refurb »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #49

I gotta say, ditching a small airplane 30 miles off shore in the Gulf of Mexico is a hell of a risky way to collect $50,000 in an insurance payout. You've got a lot of faith in your ability to make a "water landing", much less that someone comes out and gets you before something goes wrong.

Same thought occurred to me. I would have thought proving that was intention would be pretty hard considering the personal risk involved.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#67

Post by phonon »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #56

The most disturbing part of this story is how light his sentence was. I sat in a Harris County courtroom and saw a 30 year old woman with no priors plead guilty to check fraud (a few thousand dollars worth), and get a longer sentence.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/theft-carnegie-l...

$8 million, three years’ house arrest and 12 years’ probation :-/

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#68

Post by refurb »

SilasX wrote: post #12
MaximumYComb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not knowledgeable on the inner workings of insurance but if the company agrees to insure for $X, even if it's more than you paid, then isn't that legal? I assume the deliberate crashing is the illegal part?

Insurance companies are well aware of the geniuses constantly rediscovering that you can overinsure something you don't care about and then cash it in.[1] They try to protect against that by requiring that you can only get policies on something you have an "insurable interest" [2] in (i.e. independent reason to value it and not want the insured event to happen to it). They also try to closely calibrate payouts so tha…

I thought it odd that the insurance paid out a set value. I always thought it was “insurance pays value of what you lost” and that was determined after the loss.

So the fraud is really misrepresenting what you lost, not insuring it for a set value when you buy the policy.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#69

Post by billfruit »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #26
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #3

I don't want to read a novel before being able to understand what this is about. At least the article could provide a quick glimpse at what the fraud scheme is. I kept reading for 5-6 minutes and then lost interest.

I don't understand this comment at all. First of all, the first paragraph is about a suspicious plane fire - the plane literally burned in half sitting in a hangar. That should provide you some hint about what the fraud scheme is going to be. There's even an animated image of a plane on fire! Did you need the author to print "this is a story about insurance fraud" in big bold print at the top of the story? Secondly,…

The article fails to explain and make a case of why it is worthwhile to read this long an article. The article seems more interested in weaving a narrative than reporting the salient facets in a succinct form.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#70

Post by refurb »

dkarp wrote: post #28

5 years seems like such a small penalty. He was an international arms dealer and from the sounds of it selling weapons to countries that it was illegal to sell weapons to. Who knows what those weapons were used for.

From the article it didn’t seem like the arms dealing was illegal?
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