A life insurance scammer gets caught with four cohorts after involving a dead homeless man with a poisonous cobra. They used the deceased to convince a policy to pay for death benefits under false pretenses but were caught red-handed by Indian police.
The mastermind and alleged accomplices whose scheme was exposed by the investigators ended in arrest. They thought it to be foolproof when they killed the homeless man, and it would be an instant life insurance payout, but they weren't ingenious enough to outsmart the police.
Scammer fakes own death to claim $5 million life insurance benefits
The report said that Prabhakar Bhimaji Waghchaure, 54, a resident in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district, had killed Navnath Yashwant Aanap, 50, using a deadly cobra. From there, the accused used the corpse to claim about $5 million of life insurance from a US-based company, reported the Daily Star.
Several of the suspect cohorts of Waghchaure is Praveen, his nephew, together with a local Harshad Lahamge, who both identified the body as Waghchaure. The mastermind just came home to India, living as an ex-pat in the USA.
UNILAD reports the preliminary medical examination noted that a poisonous snake killed the man. Authorities then gave the body to Praveen for burial rituals.
But, the scammer and its perpetrators were exposed by investigators who looked into the claims of the policy. The fraudsters may not have been aware of that information about the alleged death of the 54-year-old, the life insurance scammer.
Insurance probe reveals homeless man used to represent the scammer
Insurance investigators visited the deceased man's home, and the probers asked the locals questions. One of the neighbors said they did not know anything about a snake incident, but they saw an ambulance during the alleged incident.
One of the people involved, Lahamge, was asked questions by the police and said that Lahamge claimed Praveen got sick and died from COVID-19.
The investigators could not trace any of Waghchaure's relatives but got a lead from his phone information. He was not dead but still living and breathing, posing as Praveen at the hospital and staying someplace else undeclared, cite the Sun UK.
Police Superintendent Manoj Patil stated that the insurance probe had a prior claim in 2017. The fraudster wanted to get money for his wife's death, which prompted the investigator to probe the current claim further.
He added that the wife of Waghchaure is alive, with other cohorts in the fraud scheme. They got the snake from a rescuer of snakes, choosing a cobra specifically.
The last part was to look for a homeless person, who can be mistaken for Waghchaure, and get the shake to bite the victim. Then the 54-year-old would impersonate Praveen and report the snakebite incident.
Leading the victim to his death, they took him by force with Waghchaure to where they would kill Aanap. The snake bit him on the toe because the handler Harish Kulal forced the snake to bit.
When the body was ready, they took it to the supposed dead man's home, then called an ambulance to report the death of Waghchaure.
Others involved in the confusing case are Sandeep Talekar and Prashant Chaudhary, the relatives of Prabhakar Bhimaji Waghchaure, the insurance scammer, found Aanap, the victim, and Lahamge, who managed to get the cobra.
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