Felonious Consumer Tricks

Or, more precisely, murderous consumer tricks:

"Florida woman had hitman kill stepfather to collect on life insurance"

Which is actually kind of refreshing after the ubiquitous "Florida Man" memes of late.

Still, beyond the actual tragedy lies a fascinating, if horrifying, detail:

"Stepdad was killed two weeks after the insurance policy was changed from $25[thousand] to $750[thousand]." [emphasis added]

There's a lot to unpack here, starting with the obvious question of how,exactly, one might go about increasing one's life insurance (let alone someone else's)  by 30-fold without some kind of underwriting?

But of course, the MSM can't be bothered to report that little piece of info; too much trouble, one supposes. So I reached out to three reporters who covered the story, and Eli Witek of The West Volusia Beacon was kind enough to share the charging document with me (Thanks, Eli!). It's a bit confusing, but it appears that the the policy was, in fact, an accidental  death plan with a $750,000 face amount. My favorite part, though, is when Ms Williams says to the Mutual of Omaha rep "life insurance is not trying to kill somebody."

What's that word?

Oh, yeah.

In the meantime, we have other questions.

The investigation revealed that Williams’ motive was an insurance policy, which she recently had increased the value in the event of Mr. Gibson’s death."

Well, yeah, three quarters of a million dollars would be classified as a decent motive for murder (even by Angela Lansbury's criteria).

As we've noted previously, it's generally considered illegal (and, of course, poor sportspersonship) to profit from ones' crime, but we also know that this isn't always the case:

"Judge rules Denver man who 'killed his wife' can use up to $500,000 from her life insurance to pay for his defense"

Be interesting to see if Ms Williams can tap that $750,000 policy's proceeds for her legal fees.

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