The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas • Hacker News Board

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#111

Post by astura » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

siberianbear wrote: post #99

InitialLastName wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My SO had an acquaintance try to convince her and her friends to join an airplane game scheme a week or two ago. I read the google drive PDF that they use to convince people, and it's terrifying how effectively it would prey on desperate people. Also crazy: nobody in the scam checks that NOT ONE of the people in that document (who mostly have unusual names) has a meaningful presence on the internet.

What is an airplane game scheme?

It's a straight up ponzi scheme.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#112

Post by ajkjk » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:16 AM UTC

jylam wrote: post #21

ajkjk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang, I really liked the long story. Just don't read it if you don't?

You didn't like OPs comment, but you replied anyway. And you can't know if you like something before reading it. And it is a forum, where anyone can (reasonably) tell everyone what (s)he think.

yeah, but it's mildly useful for people know that OP's comment isn't representative of readers, whereas it's not important that people know OP didn't like something because it was longform.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#113

Post by omega3 » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 9:56 AM UTC

It's interesting that ATF would be investigating an insurance scam just because there was arson involved. You would expect for a more suitable agency, one with more experience with such things to take over.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#114

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 11:59 AM UTC

Hey selling insurance in Texas is hard enough. A guy said "You're telling a guy, buy this and your wife can live in your house and drive your car with another guy after you're dead". Hard sell.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#115

Post by calvano915 » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

locallost wrote: post #79

Some things don't seem very plausible. Obviously he was successful, but I doubt it was on a scale he tells it. If you're smuggling helicopters from Marseille to Chad, you don't deal with 40k insurance scams. I also doubt the claim of 35 million total in insurance fraud. If his scams were in the 40-200k range as mentioned in the article, he would need to deal with hundreds of claims. IMHO he's a medium level Frank Aba…

It was made clear near the beginning that the details may or may not have been exaggerated or embellished. It was purposefully written as so because that's a part of what's intriguing about the character, that his entire schtick requires believing and/or personifying the exaggerations, and in a way it becomes reality.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#116

Post by lowdose » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

InitialLastName wrote: post #106

Frondo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like a pyramid scheme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane_game I'd love to see the document on the Google drive, though! OP, can you share it somehow?

Couldn't find a more resilient/less sketchy way to rehost without breaking my half-hearted anonymization, so here's the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UvMeetDz-uEhxolTAGBrwh2hugt... Hope I'm not blowing anyone up (well, not really. Scammers can drown in their own sewage). I dug around for what I could, but there are a distinct lack of identifying details. I don't think I've seen a marketing PDF in a long time…

Smith, most common last name in the USA.