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A Chinese woman was recently arrested for creating a
money-making scheme by purchasing flight delay insurance and then raking
in the claims.
Identified only as Li, the 45-year-old woman from Nanjing reportedly
used 20 other identities in addition to her own to take out almost 900
flight delay insurance policies from 2015 to 2019. However, rather than
getting on all these planes herself, Li would use her past travel
service work experience to select flights she expected to be delayed or
cancelled, and then collect the claims. While some sources described her
scheme as gambling, some Chinese outlets reported that the woman
conducted research before deciding which flights to buy tickets on,
checking for extreme weather or other delay-inducing events on flight
routes, and consulting user reviews.
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According to The Paper, Li was fully aware that what she was doing was
illegal, and she did everything she could to cover her tracks, using the
identities of several friends and family when taking out the flight
delay policies. However, 900 policies is a lot totaling a whopping 3
million yuan ($423,000) in profits over the course of 4 years didn’t go
unnoticed, and in April of this year, the police finally nabbed her.
While the media didn’t specify whether this played a role in her
capture, Li reportedly had the habit of trying to cut her losses by
requesting a refund of the ticket price on flights that didn’t end up
getting delayed or cancelled.
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The woman’s arrest was announced by Chinese police on Friday, June 12;
Authorities revealed that the 45-year-old had long faked information
related to flight delays and scammed large sums of money from insurance
companies. An investigation is currently underway.
The Paper reports that Li’s exploits helped insurance companies close
some of the loopholes that helped the woman carry out her illegal
scheme. Many insurers now have provisions which state, among other
things, that compensation may only be paid to people who actually used
the booked flight.
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