I am going to share a bit of common sense that most people can easily surmise. You cannot file an insurance claim on a cat that does not actually exist. It seems that a man in Tacoma, Washington, failed to grasp this concept. He is now facing charges of insurance fraud.
It is perfectly acceptable to file a pet insurance claim when your dog or cat requires health care. Auto insurance policies will cover the cost of the medical bills of the passengers who were injured during an accident. Some car insurance policies are starting to provide coverage for the injuries of the canine or feline passengers who were injured in an accident, too.
In order to file one of those types of insurance claims, the dog or cat that the claim is filed about has to actually exist. This probably seems obvious to most people. However, a man in Tacoma, Washington, named Yevgenily M. Samsonov, clearly doesn’t get it.
He was involved in a “fender bender” type of traffic accident on March 27, 2009. The driver behind him bumped into his vehicle when both were at a stop light. The damage to both vehicles was minor.
However, Mr Samsonov filed an insurance claim that included chiropractic treatment of soft tissue injuries. The other driver was at fault, so the other driver’s insurance, PEMCO, paid Mr. Samsonov $3,452 on his claim.
Two and a half years passed by. Suddenly, Mr. Samsonov decided to try and get more money from PEMCO. He now claimed that his beloved pet cat, named Tom, had died in the accident. PEMCO appears to be one of the auto insurance companies that does cover the injuries of the pets who were passengers in a vehicle at the time of an accident. They issued him a check for $50.00.
I have absolutely no explanation as to why it took him over two years to make this particular claim. One might assume that he was so distraught over the death of his beloved cat, Tom, that he was in the grieving process about poor Tom’s death for over two years.
The problem with that theory, though, is that Tom never actually existed. That’s right, he made an insurance claim on a fictitious cat. Not only did he make a claim on a cat that wasn’t there, he proceeded to insist that the $50.00 check from PEMCO wasn’t enough. Mr. Samsonov said that he originally paid $1,000 for Tom, and that the cat had been “like a son” to him, and that he wanted a check for $20,000.
It gets worse. He sent two photos of Tom, the non-existent cat, to PEMCO. A quick google image search revealed that those images are on many websites, blogs, and Facebook pages. The two photos are also of not one, but two, different, cats. Neither one of those two cats ever belonged to Mr. Samsonov. He has been charged with attempted theft and felony insurance fraud.
Image by notoriousxl on Flickr