CURIOUS INSURANCE FRAUDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8928, 17 December 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

CURIOUS INSURANCE FRAUDS.

A cueious insurance trial has come to an end at Douai after a delay of at least a year and a half. Brayelle, an insurance' agent and money lender at Somain, appears to have acquired considerable skill of a rough-and-ready kind in the diagnosis of disease, and when he encountered some poor fellow whose days on earth where numbered he took means to effect an insurance policy upon the precarious life of the sufferer. Medical certificates of % good health were obtained from a Dr. Brabant, whilst another accomplice, a joiner named jfoulain-Pennequin, made the complimentary character in this trio af roguery. The plan was as simple as it was effective. The industrious agent and the medical practitioner played their parts only too well, for at last the directors of the insurance companies began to be astonished at the prompt certitude with which the clients of Brayelle disappeared from the face of the earth after the payment of the first premium. He was a successful but by no means a profitable servant. Astonishment gave way to suspicion, and inquiries having been made, the entire plot by which fraudulent insurance were effected upon persons really lying at death's door was revealed. The result was the civil and criminal trial, which, after dragging its slow length for 18 months, has now come to an end that can only be described as disastrous for the clever conspirators. The three rogues are con* demned to indemnify the insurance offices for the money out of which they have been cheated. Dr. Brabant is farther fined 100 francs and sentenced to five years' imprison* ment; Brayelle, with whom the plot appears to have originated, is to pay ft fine .100 francs and to go to prison for three years; while Poulain-Pennequin, the humbler accomplice, escapes with a 50 franca fine and siix months' Imprisonment. The incident might "give pause" to the insurance companies were it cot for the end, which shows that rogues generally overreach themselves And are too ■ clever for permanent bit,cess. S*~ ' ' 1