Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Interesting...

So, I was skimming the Washington Post online tonight, and came across this interesting story: Two Elderly Women Jailed in Deadly Insurance Scam. These women developed a system in which they made friends with homeless men and took out life insurance policies on them. Then, the men were victims of hit-and-run accidents. The article speculates about whether the women were directly involved in the accidents or whether they had accomplices. They have made $2.2 million in the scam so far. They are currently in jail, facing charges of eight counts of mail fraud.

This is actually somewhat similar to a case that came before the judge I interned for last fall. You can read about it here. In this case, a former wrestler had taken out "key man" insurance policies on an alcoholic, disabled man that had occasionally done odd jobs for him--a man that was not eligible for this type of insurance. When the man turned up dead, the former wrestler got over $500,000 dollars. The jury found him guilty of four counts of mail fraud, and he was sentenced to 15 months in prison.

I think it's interesting that the main charges in both of these cases is mail fraud (although I guess if they find more evidence that the elderly women were directly involved with these homeless men's deaths they could be facing other charges as well). I guess it's true that at the very least, the years can certainly add up as the counts of mail fraud increase.

I had no idea that these types of scams were so popular.

Other than that, I wanted to share a few random pictures from the river trip we took the day after our last day of classes (Beth and Anne and I had a picture swap, so I now have some of these on my computer that I didn't have before). This is at the Guadalupe State Park, north of San Antonio. A pretty spot indeed :) We had a lot of fun.


The river.

Me, Mindy, and Lisa just before taking our tubing trip.

Katie, Erin, Mindy, Lisa, and Beth.

Lindy in the big, giant, tubie...thing. And my foot apparently made it in the picture too.

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