True Crime Tuesday: Cut Off Your Nose Edition

I think it’s fair to say we’ve all gone too far at least once. We’ve all made decisions in life that we regret. Sometimes you just need to make a clean break – but, on the other hand, not too clean:

From Spain, (via metro.co.uk,) for example, we have the tales of two men with the same thought:

The hapless man, who has not been named, thought he’d be able to fool 11 insurance companies out of £2m by chopping his hand off with an electric saw.

‘The cut was too clean between the bone for a car crash, which is never so clean,’ said accident investigator José Luís Nieto.

‘This man might have got someone to use a saw to cut off his hand. A surgeon would never have done it.’

The second insurance claimant went a step further by cutting off his lower arm and claiming £500,000 for an ‘electric saw accident.’

His claim was also rejected after an investigation.

Well, you know, sometimes you just need to cut your losses and move on.

Moving on, however, was exactly Audrey Ferguson’s problem – as WISTV reports.

The Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office says 51-year-old Audrey Ferguson of the Dorchester community has called EMS at least 100 times in the last seven years.

Is she extremely ill? Does she have a medical fetish? Is she just lonely?

No.

“She’ll have a vague medical complaint, for instance abdominal pain,” said Dorchester County EMS Director Doug Warren. “She has medical complaints that are legitimate, and so until she’s been evaluated and determined not to be sick we have to assume she is.”

– and why would you ever be suspicious of a little old lady?

Ferguson apparently never even went into the hospital to get treated.

Oh.

Instead she told hospital officials she was okay and left.

Huh.

“We transport her to one of the area hospitals and then oftentimes before we can get our paperwork completed she’s signed out from the hospital and gone on to do other things,” said Warren.

Warren called the sheriff’s office and asked for an investigation.

The detective assigned to the case said he wanted to be contacted the next time Ferguson called for an ambulance.

Audrey did, at least, get one more ride on the government’s tab:

On Apr. 2, investigators said Ferguson’s free rides came to an end. A Dorchester County deputy was waiting at Trident Medical Center for an ambulance carrying Ferguson.

According to an incident report, he heard her call her son, saying she needed a ride. He also heard her tell a nurse that she wasn’t ill, that she was actually feeling fine and that she was leaving.

Ferguson did leave…in handcuffs. She was taken to the Dorchester County jail.

– but how could she possibly justify such extravagance!?

On the way to jail, Ferguson told a deputy why she called for an ambulance so many times.

According to the incident report, Ferguson said she didn’t have a car and this was the only way she had to get around and Medicaid paid for it anyway. It was part of her benefits.

Forget looking into cutting healthcare costs, though: Apparently the real savings may be in fuel efficient ambulances.

And all of those ambulance trips taken by Ferguson?

Each one costs $425[.]

Finally, OpposingViews.com brings us the tale of an entirely different sort of bill:

Manhattan, Kansas, police are trying to figure out what to do with a man who called 911 in desperation after he could not pay a $400 fee to a prostitute.

The man reportedly requested a two-hour session from the pro in question. At the end of the session, he revealed to the woman that he had no money to pay her with. Understandably, the woman became upset. The man then called the police in fear that the woman or “her boss” would attempt to harm him.

A fear he may have been justified in having – even an honest burger-flipper will have issues with coming into work for a few hours without pay. Still, in the end, all involved received more than they had bargained for.

Riley County Police arrived at the mobile home and interviewed the man and the woman. No immediate arrests were made, but both people were listed as suspects on the criminal report. The man has since been charged with patronizing a prostitute and the woman has been charged with engaging in acts of prostitution.