Wednesday, 4 August 2010
FBI Uncovers Fake Funeral Scam for Life Insurance Payment
Do you ever wonder what really goes on when an elderly group of women get together? Well in the case of 67-year-old Jean Crump of South Los Angeles and her friends, it was pretty creative, but unfortunately illegal.
The States News Service reported that Crump was convicted by a federal jury for staging phony funerals to bilk money out of insurance companies by seeking payouts on their life insurance policies.
Crump was working at Simpson and McGee Mortuary and got involved in the racket to defraud the insurance providers by filing false claims for life insurance policies totalling $1.2 million for somebody who hadn’t died.
Crump and her associates were pretty thorough as they had phony death certificates prepared, bought a burial plot and then lowered an empty coffin into it. The fake funeral made everything seem normal, but a couple of insurance firms got suspicious and starting poking their noses around. This worried Crump, and she then dug up the coffin and filled it with body parts of a cow and a mannequin before cremating it.
The women then filed more bogus documents at the County of Los Angeles which stated the fake corpse's body was cremated and the ashes scattered at sea. Crump even tried to bribe a doctor by offering $50,000 to falsify medical records to support the phony death certificate.
It was also revealed the criminals defrauded a number of companies that hand over cash advances for funerals in return for some of the decedents' life insurance policies. Crump made up phony invoices which claimed a funeral took place at three separate mortuaries. Two of the insurance providers sent her money in advance to cover the fake funeral.
Crump was convicted on a count of mail fraud along with two counts of wire fraud and faces a possible prison sentence of up to 90 years. Three other women will face charges as well.
