An odd plan that a US man had to pay someone to cut his legs in order to get insurance

Suspected insurance fraud attempts include a guy in Missouri, US, who reportedly paid someone to slash both of his legs and staged a tractor accident to hide the injuries. A Willow Springs man, 60, claimed to have lost both legs in a brush hog accident. The Howell County Sheriff’s Office looked into the matter. But anomalies emerged, including the fact that his amputated legs were missing, his wounds were remarkably clean for a brush hog, and his known paraplegic state, casting doubt on how he could have ended up in the path of a tractor-driven brush hog.

The Howell County Sheriff’s Office lieutenant, Torey Thompson, told the Springfield News Reader, “It would have been a bloody, gory mess if a brush hog did it.” I’ve seen similar incidents in the past. That wasn’t how this was. The tourniquets on the man’s leg stumps, which were placed right away after the occurrence, also perplexed the police and medical staff at the accident site. A Florida guy allegedly visited the victim with a hatchet and chopped off his legs for a price, according to a subsequent inquiry.

The sixty-year-old paraplegic had devised a plan to defraud insurance companies, and as he was unable to use his legs any more, he chose to have them severed in a staged accident. But there was no need to charge him because he hadn’t made a claim with the insurance company yet. “It was a poorly executed plan; I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Lieutenant Thompson said.

Although the sheriff’s office was unable to legally prosecute the paraplegic man with insurance fraud, they considered charging him for making a fraudulent police/EMS report since it was a waste of time and money. It was decided to let the guy heal at a hospital since jail would not be feasible given the extent of his injuries. Amazingly, the man’s severed legs were turned up to detectives when a relative found them buried in a bucket under tires.