Note to self: While working on one’s car in a public space, the convenience of balancing highly addictive narcotics on its hood may be outweighed by the risk of being detained—especially if the vehicle may have been stolen. (This has been your “Courtesy Common Sense Advice” for today. Check back in tomorrow for more mind-blowing tips!)If only the North Carolina man that The News-Herald refers to as a “habitual felon” had taken this to heart.
Following a lead about a stolen car in the Spring of 2014, sheriff’s deputies paid a visit to this man and they witnessed him attempt to conceal a prescription pill bottle filled with, what turned out to be, five grams of methamphetamine that he’d been keeping within reach. Fast forward one year, and the sheriff’s office gets a phone call from this very same man, who reports, with another person, that $13,000 worth of items have been stolen from their home. The two then proceeded to file an insurance claim—on a policy that they had purchased only five days prior. (Little did they know that the insurance industry has little faith in coincidences.)
County detectives worked their counterparts from the North Carolina Department of Insurance to conduct an investigation. Apparently, that’s all it took to pull a confession from this “habitual felon,” who admitted that the break-in was fabricated and the insurance claim was fraudulent. He subsequently pleaded guilty to attempted insurance fraud and possession of methamphetamine and was sentenced by a North Carolina Superior Court judge to eight to eleven years in prison; a sentence that was enhanced because of his (you guessed it!) “habitual felon status.”
Psychologists disagree on exactly how long it takes to break old habits and create new ones, but the span is typically measured in days, not years. So this fraudster will have plenty of practice.
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