Sharp County record., 1885-08-06
SPURIOUS CORPSES.

Swindling Insurance Companies?
Mr.. E. B. Harper, President of the
Mutual Reserve Fund Life Association,
advertised yesterday reward of $500
for information securing the arrest and
conviction OF any person who has
swindled the association by fraudulent
death claims. MIR. Harper said yeSter'
day
''There is an organized gang of in
Surance brokers in this city who make
1t their business to swindle insurance
companies on fraudulent claims. They
bring in some good business, and under
cover of it work in the bad. | know
who they are, and I can lay my hands
on them. Detectives are after them,
and | propose to get some of them into
prison if possible. The insurance COM
panies have lost enormous sums by
these swindlers. The life insurance
business pays out $50,000,000 year in
losses, and it is natural that swindlers
should try to get hold of some OF this
money. They have two ways of doing
it-by substitution and by pretended
death. In substitution they bring per-
fectly healthy man to be examined, and
he gives as his own name the name of
some person who is very sick. Of course
he passes the medical examination readl
ily Shorty atterward the man for
whom he was substituted dies, and then
claim is made for the insurance. You
see how hard it is for us to discover the
deception, but we are now very careful
to be sure of the identity of the man be-
fore we give him policy.
"In pretended death it is either as
serted that the body can not be found,
Or body is produced which is asserted
to be that of the policy holder. In the
first case drowning is a favorite pre-
tense. The man goes fishing in the
evening, falls overheard, and his body
can never be found. In recent case a
man fell overheard in Catskill creek.
Cannon were fired, and the creek drag
ged, but no body was discovered. A
claim was made for a large insurance,
and detectives investigated the case.
They found the supposed dead man in
Cleveland. He had dropped overheard
purposely, and swan quietly to point
some distance away, where confeder-
ates had left dry clothes for him. The
people with whom he was fishing were
quite innocent of any guilt, and really
supposed him to be drowned.
Then, again, a strange dead man is
dressed in the clothes of the policy
holder, and the family recognize the
body by the clothes Recently body
at the Morgue was identified in this
way, and claim made upon us for
heavy insurance We found that the
family did not attend the funeral and
that friends were excluded. We have
since learned that the man is in Ham,
burg. 1t is easy to buy dead body for
such purposes
81 remember another case of man
who was member of several benefit
societies, and whose total insurance ag-
gregated S20,000 He app died
and was buried, and the fal4.y pu. on
mourning. The benefit associations has
tened to pay the money, and thought
they had done good thing. -Four years
later the entire family, dead husband
included, were found living in atfiu-
ence in Germany on the money thus
fraudulently obtained, They had substi-
tuted body.
The swindling brokers generally pick
out small insurance companies, which
can not afford to make extensive inves-
tigat' ons on every suspicion OF fraud.
The fraudulent insurances are generally
for amounts under $4,000, as they thus
attract little attention and the COM
panies don't make such fuss over
them. To secure the money on pre-
tended death it is generally necessary
to have the physician or some one OF
the family in the scheme. | recall q
case of substitution where the widow OF
the dead man was to receive a certain
sum for passing him off as the man to
whom the policy was given. She learned
that she was entitled to all the money
and made such q fuss that the fraud
was discovered. TO avoid fraud we
now require physicians to certify that
they are positive as to the identity Oh
the dead man. The mercantile agencies
often investigate cases of alleged death
for us, and have reported in several in
stances that the men were alive. Ii
company gets badly caught it is very
apt to hush it up for fear OF injuring
business. Insurance men meet and talk
over these matters. and we have already
prepared black list of fraudulent
agents and physicians, and by it we
have saved great deal Of money. we
are working now to expose them and
we hone to drive them out of the busl-
ness. IN Y Sun.