An Insurance Conspiracy Foiled

by Allan Pinkerton

Of all species of business there is none so liable to the machinations of dishonest persons as the insurance. The large sums which are often secured from death or loss, with the undeniable obligations which the companies labor under to cancel their indebtedness, upon the showing of good and sufficient causes for the same, are incentives that have often urged men to employ their ingenuity and villainy in endeavors to defraud insurance companies. There may be something like a law of compensation about this kind of swindling, as the insurance business itself has harbored most accomplished scamps, and presented to the world about as brilliant schemes of commercial piracy as have come to light in any other kind of business. Of these instances Dickens has given us the type in “Martin Chuzzlewit,” in the operations of Montague Tiggs, Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Insurance Company; and, as an illustration of the consummate plans for defrauding honestly-conducted insurance companies, the following case, where I was fortunately able to defeat an exceedingly clever scheme of fraud, will stand as an interesting illustration of conspiracies against such corporations. 

In the month of June, 1866, one Monroe Rigger, a sailor, at that time a resident of Chicago, called at the office of a certain life insurance company, and effected an insurance upon his life for the sum of five thousand dollars. For this policy he paid the sum of thirty dollars. This was an ordinary case of insurance… Read More