The 12 Dumbest Insurance Scams Of The Past Decade

3. Woman files a $10.000 claim for a much cheaper fur coat and claimed it was stolen

Single item insurance fraud is a growing trend in the criminal world. You get an item assessed by a professional and estimate its value and then proceed to accuse someone of replacing it or getting it lost in order to get your hands on a much bigger amount of money. Although it may seem preposterous, it does indeed happen very often. It’s in fact amongst the top three ways of scamming insurance companies. And people still fall for it.

In this case, they almost feel for it. The perpetrator was the 59-year-old Samiha Guirguis, a Philadelphia native. She had the brilliant idea of filing charges against a department store for a mink coat she gave them in 2005. Her accusations were that the receipt they gave her for an estimated value of $1.000 was false. Instead, she wanted to let the authorities know that the coat was actually worth $10.000 and that the department store was trying to scam her.

She made a claim under her homeowner’s policy. In the midst of all the chaos, she omitted one crucial piece of information. On the inside of the coat, her name was monogrammed. This immediately dispersed all her claims and let the police know she was just trying to milk out some money from the department store owner.

In the midst of the case, the officers involved refused to have any mercy on this woman trying to get even more money for an expensive coat. She was slammed with two counts of theft by deception, one instance of forgery and insurance fraud. The charges alone are serious, not to mention the consequences she might face if the judge also refuses to have mercy. Serves her right for being greedy.