
The wildest insurance fraud scheme in Texas - diaphanous
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/it-was-never-enough/
======
breakfastduck
What a fascinating character & interesting read.

> he is taking college correspondence courses, “the path of least resistance”
> toward a business administration PhD. “I simply thought, if someone is going
> to call me a con man or [say] ‘you’re an asshole,’ well—it will be doctor
> asshole,” he said.

He may be in prison, but at least he's not lost his sense of humor. Completely
in character based on the rest of the piece!

------
NelsonMinar
I gotta say, ditching a small airplane 30 miles off shore in the Gulf of
Mexico is a hell of a risky way to collect $50,000 in an insurance payout.
You've got a lot of faith in your ability to make a "water landing", much less
that someone comes out and gets you before something goes wrong.

~~~
fny
Sounds like a hell of a lot more fun than setting a house on fire.

~~~
notatoad
yeah, the article seems to paint a pretty clear picture of a guy who figured
out how he could crash-land a plane _and_ get paid for the experience. he
probably would have done it for $5.

------
theli0nheart
Given how long it took to catch him, after years of outrageous purchases and
shady business dealings, it makes me wonder if frauds are much more common
than conventional wisdom would lead one to believe.

~~~
3pt14159
Fraud is extremely common and the best way to avoid it is to get personal
recommendations for anything important, like business contacts, lawyers, or
accountants.

Over a decade ago, a friend of mine was under the legal age when he sold his
collection of websites with the same theme for around $100m. I'm sure you've
heard of at least one of the properties. Being underage, he didn't know how to
protect himself, and he gave his lawyers power of attorney. They took almost
the entire acquisition for themselves and left the USA.

That's fraud. Those guys are still out there. He contacted other lawyers and
they basically said "it's been too long the money is gone and so are these
criminals."

~~~
sizzle
Wow that's a crazy story that would benefit from the streisand effect to enact
some justice on those scumbag lawyers. Any idea why your friend isn't trying
to actively expose these individuals who screwed him over?

~~~
3pt14159
Well, at first he was worried that he'd be known as a sucker and wouldn't be
able to raise money for another company. "I sold XYZ for $100m, now fund my
new thing ABC." Sounds a lot better than the raw truth. Since then, he's
started something that's doing well. Some pretty interesting investors, some
market traction, but he's still no where near being worth $100m.

------
rudiv
They say everything's bigger in Texas, I didn't know it extended to
narcissistic personality disorder.

~~~
thebradbain
As a Texan, I can tell you that's exactly _why_ that saying exists in the
first place.

I'm only half joking...

[https://www.aiadallas.org/v/columns-detail/Everything-Is-
Big...](https://www.aiadallas.org/v/columns-detail/Everything-Is-Bigger-in-
Texas/qh/)

~~~
jfoutz
I'm from a neighboring state that provides hospitality to wealthy Texan
tourists. It's sort of an odd dynamic. Want people to enjoy themselves and
have fun, but also take the wind out of people's sails from time to time. It's
probably easier to explain with an old joke.

A Texan is bragging about how big his ranch is. "It takes all day to drive
around the edge of my ranch". The sly reply is "Yeah, my truck's like that
too".

Generally good natured, but from time to time, one side or the other is a
little too invested in the hype and it's not so funny.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> The venture escalated on a kiosk-buying trip to the Shenzhen International
> Toy and Education Fair, in China, where, T. R. claimed, he came up with an
> idea for a console for pirated video games called Power Player that would
> plug into a TV and allow users to play classics like Space Invaders and
> Galaga. He decided to focus on selling Power Player wholesale. It was a huge
> hit, T. R. said, until the FBI began arresting the biggest Power Player
> retail operators. Panicking, he abandoned his business and left the United
> States with $8,000 to travel in Europe.

I'm pretty sure I actually own one of these. For a while I collected some of
these silly pirate consoles. If I recall this one correctly it had a N64
controller body for some reason.

------
simonebrunozzi
I don't want to read a novel before being able to understand what this is
about. At least the article could provide a quick glimpse at what the fraud
scheme is.

I kept reading for 5-6 minutes and then lost interest.

~~~
bluedevil2k
I don't understand this comment at all.

First of all, the first paragraph is about a suspicious plane fire - the plane
literally burned in half sitting in a hangar. That should provide you _some_
hint about what the fraud scheme is going to be. There's even an animated
image of a plane on fire! Did you need the author to print "this is a story
about insurance fraud" in big bold print at the top of the story?

Secondly, comments like this are really worthless on HN, it adds nothing to
the discussion and as you point out, you didn't even read the article. Why
even both writing a waste of a comment?

~~~
jasode
_> I don't understand this comment at all. [...] Why even both writing a waste
of a comment?_

I understand where the op's reading frustration is coming from. For some urls
that point to pdf files or racy content, we might put informal warning tags
such as "[pdf]" or "[NSFW]". But there really isn't a meta tag such as
"[human_interest_story]" to warn readers of this type of article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-
interest_story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-interest_story)

There's nothing wrong with human interest stories (and even long form texts of
it) but it's tedious for many who aren't expecting it. (I.e. some global
readers aren't familiar with TexasMonthly and its editorial focus on long-form
human interest articles.)

One type of reader just wants the _mechanics of the insurance fraud_
explained. Thus, the human names -- whoever they are -- are not important --
because they will be forgotten 5 seconds after finishing the article. If it's
the "wildest" insurance fraud, what makes it more wild than other insurance
scams? Unfortunately, many articles "trick" readers with a compelling title
about some <situation> but the actual article is mostly about <person(s)>.
Some readers care more about details of the insurance deception than the
escapades of Mr. TR Wright.

Another example of this mis-alignment between some readers and the author is
the _" Why it's so hard to find dumbbells in the US (vox.com)"_ article that
was on HN front page today. The actual article starts off with human-interest
stuff by mentioning people like like Andrew, Logan, Fread, etc and goes on
like that for many paragraphs. But the HN top-voted comment extracts the
relevant explanation that actually _answers the question_ put forth in the
title:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24270770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24270770)

~~~
simonebrunozzi
> One type of reader just wants the mechanics of the insurance fraud
> explained.

Exactly me. And I was not familiar with TexasMonthly, despite having lived in
the US (California) for the last 8 years. (I am originally from Europe)

~~~
bluedevil2k
Then go to Wikipedia and look up "insurance fraud".

------
ryanmarsh
The most disturbing part of this story is how light his sentence was. I sat in
a Harris County courtroom and saw a 30 year old woman with no priors plead
guilty to check fraud (a few thousand dollars worth), and get a longer
sentence.

~~~
phonon
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/theft-
carnegie-l...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/theft-carnegie-
library-books-maps-artworks-180975506/)

$8 million, three years’ house arrest and 12 years’ probation :-/

------
sasaf5
Very interesting read!

This fellow reminds me of Barry Seal [0], recently dramatized in the movie
"American Made."

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Seal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Seal)

------
locallost
Some things don't seem very plausible. Obviously he was successful, but I
doubt it was on a scale he tells it. If you're smuggling helicopters from
Marseille to Chad, you don't deal with 40k insurance scams. I also doubt the
claim of 35 million total in insurance fraud. If his scams were in the 40-200k
range as mentioned in the article, he would need to deal with hundreds of
claims. IMHO he's a medium level Frank Abagnale catch me if you can type con
artist, who also likes to exaggerate his success. He's also a bit too open
telling his story for everyone to know.

I read the whole thing and also did not appreciate the writing. Mostly it's
just cliches and fluff, and superficial in that it didn't really dig deeper
other than taking the said things for granted.

~~~
Semaphor
My impression was (and TR claimed so as well), that he did those things for
fun. he was an adrenaline junkie. It might mostly be lies, and you could be
right, but reading this, doing crazy insurance scams just because he could
seems 100% in character for the person depicted.

------
dkarp
5 years seems like such a small penalty.

He was an international arms dealer and from the sounds of it selling weapons
to countries that it was illegal to sell weapons to. Who knows what those
weapons were used for.

~~~
adrianmsmith
But I think he wasn’t convicted for that? (Not sure why.)

~~~
giarc
I think its a common situation where you have to decide between crimes with
long sentences, but hard to prove and smaller charges that are easier to
prove.

------
W-Stool
Note - an L-39 is not a MiG - it was designed in Czechoslovakia by Aero
Vodochody. A small point, but these kind of large errors in articles I'm
supposed to be taking seriosly drive me crazy.

~~~
zaroth
There’s nothing about TFA that should be taken seriously. It’s pulp fiction.
Just like TR himself. Not to say “whoosh”, but I’m pretty sure that’s the
whole point of the piece?

~~~
Cederfjard
Completely besides the point, but isn’t it unnecessary to use ”TFA” in this
instance? Personally I’m not at all offended by strong language, but it just
seems hostile for no reason.

~~~
zaroth
To me 'TFA' means The Featured Article.

Is there an abbreviation for that which is as widely known as TFA which
doesn't have a negative potential interpretation (The Fucking Article)?

'OP' refers to the user who posted, not the post itself. The word 'Post' is I
guess an OK but not great alternative.

~~~
Cederfjard
>To me 'TFA' means The Featured Article.

Fair enough, I wasn’t aware/didn’t think of that. My mind went straight to
”the fucking article”, which is why it appeared hostile to me.

~~~
0xffff2
"TFA" is definitely "the fucking article". C.f. "RTFM": "Read the fucking
manual".

------
zhte415
Fascinating read. And perhaps more.

------
0xffff2
>“Yes, I had around $35 million in fraudulent insurance claims around the
world,” he wrote me

...

>He was also ordered to forfeit his Learjet and to pay $988,554.83 in
restitution to various insurance companies

And they say crime doesn't pay. :/

------
selimthegrim
Presumably title is a reference to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Little_Whorehouse_in_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Little_Whorehouse_in_Texas)

------
JoeAltmaier
Hey selling insurance in Texas is hard enough. A guy said "You're telling a
guy, buy this and your wife can live in your house and drive your car with
another guy after you're dead". Hard sell.

------
omega3
It's interesting that ATF would be investigating an insurance scam just
because there was arson involved. You would expect for a more suitable agency,
one with more experience with such things to take over.

------
efa
Sounds like a good candidate for an American Greed episode.

------
nakagin
Would make a good script for a Wolf of Wall Street type of movie

------
debacle
> Reed, a fit 29-year-old who was as careful with his clean-cut brown hair and
> clean-shaven face as he was with his deposition-ready phrasing

Is there a tl;dr that would allow me to skip the bulk of this creative writing
essay?

~~~
nwsm
[https://www.justice.gov/usao-edtx/pr/texas-pilot-
sentenced-w...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-edtx/pr/texas-pilot-sentenced-
wire-fraud-and-arson-conspiracies)

------
zalkota
He got away easy! Great read, thanks.

~~~
wyldfire
Losing his wife (and daughter?) seems like a pretty significant consequence.

