STRANGE INSURANCE FRAUD

Taranaki Daily News, 17 June 1932, Page 7

STRANGE INSURANCE FRAUD

FRIEND RECOGNISES “DEAD MAN.”

IMPRISONMENT OF FRENCH COUPLE By Telegraph—Press Assn. —CopyrightLondon, June 14. A Lyons message states that Louis Durand has been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for a daring insurance fraud. He was an accomplice of the young woman, Jeanne Piolat, who, as a beneficiary under the insurance/ was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.

A cable on May 2 stated that a coffin containing sand had been dug up in a cemetery. This confirmed the confession of Louis Durand, who was arrested at Lyons on December 23 in connection witn a plot to defraud an insurance company, Police inquiries at Lyons, which resulted in the arrest of Durand, disclosed an arduous but successful insurance fraud. The originator of the fraud insured his life for £15,000. He then drank a hugs dose of quinine, which produced symptoms that convinced a doctor that the man had brain fever. Next day a woman friend announced the man’s demise and secured a death certificate. The imposer, carefully made up to represent a corpse, lay in a pallid state all day amid mourning friends and relatives, who left before the undertakers arrived. The swindler then hid in a cup-’ board while the coffin containing sand was removed and reverently buried. The swindler and the woman bought a farm on the proceeds of the insurance and might have lived happily ever after had not a former friend recognised the supposed “corpse.”