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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

#71

Post by 3pt14159 »

theli0nheart wrote: post #33

Given how long it took to catch him, after years of outrageous purchases and shady business dealings, it makes me wonder if frauds are much more common than conventional wisdom would lead one to believe.

Fraud is extremely common and the best way to avoid it is to get personal recommendations for anything important, like business contacts, lawyers, or accountants.

Over a decade ago, a friend of mine was under the legal age when he sold his collection of websites with the same theme for around $100m. I'm sure you've heard of at least one of the properties. Being underage, he didn't know how to protect himself, and he gave his lawyers power of attorney. They took almost the entire acquisition for themselves and left the USA.

That's fraud. Those guys are still out there. He contacted other lawyers and they basically said "it's been too long the money is gone and so are these criminals."

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#72

Post by dkarp »

refurb wrote: post #70
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?

“and before you realize it, you’ve got a load of freshly overhauled attack helicopters getting snuck out of Marseille in the middle of the night going to Chad.”

Maybe not but if it's not illegal, why would they need to be snuck out? He might have just been adding more drama to a regular old arms deal

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#73

Post by everybodyknows »

ideals wrote: post #44
theli0nheart wrote: post #33

Given how long it took to catch him, after years of outrageous purchases and shady business dealings, it makes me wonder if frauds are much more common than conventional wisdom would lead one to believe.

Well MLM scams are alive and well today and have been coming out of Utah for the last 20 years so I'd say fraud is pretty common. Check Craigslist for some fun frauds and scams, they're right out in the open. Social media are open markets for fraud too

How tough is it to take down such an operation? Bill Ackman bet and lost $1B trying:

https://dealbreaker.com/2020/05/herbalife-fined-for-china-br...

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#74

Post by paulintrognon »

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,…

> Why even both writing a waste of a comment?

Because now the top reply of his comment is a summary of the article. So, not that useless of a comment

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#75

Post by ryandrake »

jasode wrote: post #37
bluedevil2k wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

>I don't understand this comment at all. [...] Why even both writing a waste of a comment? I understand where the op's reading frustration is coming from. For some urls that point to pdf files or racy content, we might put informal warning tags such as "[pdf]" or "[NSFW]". But there really isn't a meta tag such as "[human_interest_story]" to warn readers of this type of article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-in…

I think it's an expectation mismatch. It's jarring to expect to read a concise, structured news article, and instead start reading "It was a dark and stormy night..." We don't just have news articles here, but we have no way of tagging links as [long reads].

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#76

Post by SilasX »

zonethundery wrote: post #35
tantalor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 6 hundred word article is blown up to 6 thousand words to fill more pages and sell more ads. It's not for the benefit of the reader.

Texas Monthly has a long, storied history as a well-regarded print magazine. A content farm it is not.

>A content farm it is not.

My overloaded uBlock says otherwise...

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#77

Post by tantalor »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #42
tantalor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 6 hundred word article is blown up to 6 thousand words to fill more pages and sell more ads. It's not for the benefit of the reader.

There were exactly 0 ads in that piece (unless you consider the 1 pitch to subscribe to that same magazine an ad).

I count 7: 4 third-party ad spots on desktop, and 3 subscription pitches (in-house ads) in the article copy.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#78

Post by SilasX »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #42
tantalor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 6 hundred word article is blown up to 6 thousand words to fill more pages and sell more ads. It's not for the benefit of the reader.

There were exactly 0 ads in that piece (unless you consider the 1 pitch to subscribe to that same magazine an ad).

Did you have an adblocker on? It definitely has ads -- I see a few within and a Frost ad to the side. uBlock reports 13 things blocked ... and updates.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#79

Post by locallost »

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 Abagnale catch me if you can type con artist, who also likes to exaggerate his success. He's also a bit too open telling his story for everyone to know.

I read the whole thing and also did not appreciate the writing. Mostly it's just cliches and fluff, and superficial in that it didn't really dig deeper other than taking the said things for granted.

Re: The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas

#80

Post by SilasX »

drtillberg wrote: post #22
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.

Kid bought an old crappy yacht. Years later he's caught in serial insurance fraud transactions for boats and planes. The dollar ripoff values go from $40k to $100k's rapidly within a few years, and a few years later he's in jail. Guy is in this line of 'work' because he is an adrenaline junkie. It brings certain side benefits-- dealing in obscure obsolete aircraft and parts gives him means of leisure and more than a…

Why didn't insurers keep track of his record of filing claims and charge increasingly high premiums after his super-early claims?
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