SEOUL (AFP) — A South Korean woman who held a funeral for her husband after claiming he was lost at sea scammed insurers out of 800,000 dollars before he was found alive and well, police said Tuesday.
The fraud in the southeastern town of Tongyeong is part of an increasing trend of bogus claims, insurers say.
It began in March 2006 when she told police that her husband had failed to return from a fishing trip, a police spokesman in the nearby city of Changwon told AFP.
The husband had left his boat adrift and sneaked back ashore on a different boat as a major sea search was launched.
He went to ground for some three years elsewhere in the country as his wife successfully filed claims totalling 1.1 billion won with six insurance firms.
She even held a funeral for her spouse, receiving the customary condolence cash payments from mourners.
The pair finally came to grief when the husband shared his secret with an acquaintance during a drinking session and the friend reported it to police.
They will face criminal charges, the police spokesman said.
The Seoul Shinmun newspaper said insurance scams were becoming "low-risk, high-return" crimes.
Kim Seong, an official of the General Insurance Association of Korea, told the daily such crimes have risen sharply since the 1997 economic crisis,
The Financial Supervisory Commission said 41,019 people were caught over insurance frauds last year, up 33 percent from a year earlier.
"However, statistics on insurance frauds fail to reflect reality, as many people are believed to get away with these crimes," Kim said.
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