ANOTHER REMARKABLE INSURANCE FRAUD.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1090, 22 June 1882, Page 4

ANOTHER REMARKABLE INSURANCE FRAUD.

The following remarkable instance of an insurance fraud is contained iu the Sydney Echo: — A tradesman in Copenhagen insured his life for 2,000 dols. in the London Globe Insurance Company, and after some time, as he was about to travel to Berlin, increased the sum insured to 5,000 dols. for one year. When all was settled he set out and arrived in Berlin. In due course the Berlin agent for the Globe Company (who is our informant) received instructions to inquire into and report upon the death of one of the Company’s clients from Copenhagen, who had died of rapid consumption in the Prussian capital. In accordance with advices, the agent went to a house in Unter den Linden, where on the third floor a tailor and his men carried on business. Here the Copenhagen man had died, his short illness being suddenly brought on by rushing violently to catch the train from Hamburg. Chill followed the heat and exertion, then hemorrhage, and finally death. A certificate of the cause of death was shown, signed by a doctor; and one of burial from the priest who had performed the last service. The friends were in great distress at the calamity. The agent reported; the money was paid. Shortly after one of the tailor’s workmen was imprisoned, and not being able to prove his innocence, he, in despair, asked whether his punishment would be lightened if he exposed a crime. Receiving an affirmative answer, he disclosed that a man had been reported as dead and buried to secure 5000 dole, from the Globe Insurance Company. He declared that a lay figure had been prepared, the intestines of a pig introduced, and the whole strapped to a tailor's ironing board; that when sufficiently objectionable to the olfactory nerves to check examination and encourage haste, the services of a physician and priest had been secured. The agent of the Globe Company and the authorities of the Roman Church, indignant at the deception, joined in the investigation, and an exhumation of the supposed Copenhagen man’s body proved tho workman’s story. There was then no electric telegraph, and with the greatest despatch in sending the news the victim to consumption got safely away. His disconsolate widow, who received the money, and sent the bulk to her husband, was disturbed in her ostensible selling off to return home, and compelled to give up the remainder of the plunder; but still the insurance company lost heavily. And but for the workman’s offence who would have heard of the story ?