Life Insurance Scam Hits Old Age Homes And The Homeless
Editor-at-large Everson Luhanga speaks to the South African Insurance Crime Bureau (SAICB) to uncover how syndicates exploit cracks in the system — using stolen IDs, fake deaths, and corrupt officials to rake in millions from life insurance claims.
Mortuaries, hospitals, old age homes, and the homeless are some of the targets that the syndicates of the dubbed “death industry” operate in. They do this by bribing their connections.
Criminal syndicates recruit runners to buy identity documents of dead people. The kingpin will then insure them (insuring the dead person’s ID) and “kill” them again in order to pocket millions.
Scrolla.Africa interviewed Johan Steyn, the Head of Life and Operations of the South African Insurance Credit Bureau (SAICB), who said the fraudsters have turned the industry into a money-making scheme.
Steyn said criminals buy the ID of a dead person. Insure the dead person. Wait for their contacts at the mortuary to notify them of an unidentified body. Obtain a death certificate from a crooked Home Affairs official or internet café. Take the unidentified body from the mortuary. Claim the insurance money and make millions out of it.
He said some people even fake their own deaths to claim money, some, shockingly, for their weddings!
Although the proportion of people doing what he called “insurable interest” is small, the country is facing a serious problem as more and more people have found this a way of making easy money.
Other scenarios are targeting the homeless, people taking care of the sick, and the aged.
Steyn said, “We have dealt with cases where professionals like police officers, teachers, pastors, security guards, health officials, lawyers, and people in other professions are implicated in killing people and claiming money out of their death.”
Steyn says it is very easy to get a funeral policy. “As long as you have the date of birth for the person you are insuring and your bank account, you are set to go.”
He said he has worked on heartbreaking cases. One of them was two sisters who collaborated with their boyfriends to kill the girls’ mother. “The mother was killed and dumped on the street to look like it was a hit and run. Investigations revealed that she was killed by her daughters and their boyfriends who were then arrested.”
He also remembered another case of a fraudster. “He took a homeless man to his home, cleaned him up, opened a funeral policy, and then killed him. He then claimed the money,” he said.
Scrolla.Africa is exposing South Africa’s deadly life insurance fraud industry in this eight-part series, inspired by Everson Luhanga’s explosive investigation into serial killer cop Rosemary Ndlovu.