Insurance Journal has a write-up on 2011 legendary insurance criminals.  Some are hilarious, but some are just down right scary.  Fortunately, crime did not pay for these guys:

Daffy diamond heist. Financially strapped diamond merchants Atul Shah & Haveer Kankariya staged a dopey $9-million diamond heist for insurance money. They hired two thugs to dress as Hassidic Jews in beards and black-brimmed hats, then pretend to rob their Manhattan business. But the merchants’ own security cameras recorded them removing the diamonds themselves. The merchants both received up to four years in prison.

Cow parts & mannequins. Jean Crump and Faye Shilling took out life insurance on Jim Davis, a fake person they invented. “Davis” later died of a heart attack, the Los Angeles duo said. Crump and Shilling staged his funeral, with fake mourners and a burial. Then they dug up the empty coffin when the life insurer got nosey. They filled it with the mannequin and cow parts to fool workers lugging the box to the crematorium to erase the evidence. Crump awaits sentencing, and Shilling received two years in federal prison.

Executed scheme. Dogged by debt, William Craig Miller burned down his fancy Scarsdale, Ariz. house for an insurance payday. Miller then executed two witnesses in their home. He also gunned down three kids in the home to keep them quiet. Some were shot at point plank, including a 10-year-old boy. Miller received the death penalty.

Bad medicine. Armen Karazianis headed an Armenian-American gang that bilked Medicare out of $163 million in one of the largest Medicare scams ever by one criminal gang. The Los Angeles-area man set up 118 fake medical clinics in 25 states, and stole the identities of doctors and Medicare beneficiaries. Karazianis also recruited Medicare patients for bogus treatments, and staged crashes for false injury claims. Karazianis received three years in federal prison.

Blind to honesty. Kevin Pushia was a Baltimore pastor who befriended a blind, developmentally disabled man named Lemuel Wallace. Pushia secretly took out $1.4 million of life insurance on Wallace, then had him shot in a park bathroom. Pushia even stole $50,000 from his own church to pay the hitmen. He also tellingly scrawled “L.W. project completed” in his datebook. Pushia earned life in prison.

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