Committing insurance fraud, mail or otherwise, is universally a fairly dumb thing to do — especially when your plan is literally designed to fail. Like, say, that of 29-year-old idiot Nathan Meunch and friend. Because if you’re trying to pass off a soggy, dripping cardboard box stuffed with ice as a $4000 stack of iPads, chances are — you’re getting caught.
Of course, it all started innocuously enough for Meunch when he sauntered into a UK post office in a soaking wet jacket. Meunch tried to explain away his damp coat by telling a mail clerk named Elaine Sloane that it was raining outside — a questionable claim considering the post office’s giant window told her that, you know, it wasn’t. But people are weird, so she went on to listen politely as he explained that he’d like to mail a box supposedly containing $4000 worth of iPads. And the return address? He, uh, couldn’t remember.
Sloane, for some reason, decided not to question this amnesic compulsive liar and accepted the package. About an hour later, a different employee noticed that the iPads seemed to be excreting water at an alarming rate (which, for iPads, should probably be any rate whatsoever) and that the tablets were actually just blocks of ice. Wrapped in a now-disintegrating cardboard box, which the post office employees decided they should probably go ahead and mail anyway. Because neither snow nor rain nor heat nor ice block masquerading as iPad something something probably applies in England too.
A few days later, lo and behold, the post office got an insurance claim in the amount of $4000 from 29-year-old Nigel Bennett — the box’s recipient. The poorly planned scheme was immediately exposed, and both men have been sentenced to 12 months of community service, 150 hours of unpaid work for the courts, and a roughly $800 fine. That may seem like a relatively shortlived punishment, sure — but the shame, my friends? That lasts forever. [Mirror]