Random News Stories

[Ryan Gallagher]

I must be missing something because I don't see where the gain is.

Just choosing random values, I have a car worth $50,000 with a $5000 insurance deductible.

I hire someone to wreck it for me and pay that guy something (because he probably won't do that for free).

I call the insurance company. "The bear ate my car."

The insurance guy looks at it. He says, "We'll fix that. Pay your $5000 deductible."

Or he says, "This is a write off. Here's $45,000, which is the value of your car less your deductible."

I don't see a scenario where the scammer comes out ahead here.

You assume the scammer got the car a legal way and had money into it already. Maybe if they can get the insurance to write it off it is a form of laundering a stolen car for a legit one?

[Leo Enticknap]

Very likely. The three vehicles involved were a Rolls-Royce and two Mercs. As I mentioned above, it is very rare to see that sort of car up in the San Bernardino Mountains: the narrow, twisty, steep roads that are the only route up and down them, added to the fact that if you live there, you will need to haul most of your groceries and the other necessities of life up from San Bernardino or Redlands, see to it that the majority of vehicles you'll see in communities like Arrowhead, Running Springs, etc. are either pickup trucks or AWD SUVs. Presumably the Roller and the Mercs were driven up there on the assumption that the insurance companies would have a very hard time believing that they were attacked by a bear in downtown San Bernardino.

But to put the icing on the cake, they really should have done this in nearby Big Bear City.

They are going to have a helluva time trying to empanel a jury for this case; specifically, finding 12 citizens in the locality who are utterly devoid of anything close to a sense of humor, to be able to sit through this trial with a straight face. The first time I was called for jury duty (less than a month after my naturalization ceremony!), a friend told me about the occasion in which she took part in the selection process for a trial in which some parents were suing a daycare, because, while supposedly being supervised by the daycare's staff, their kid inserted a Lego piece where the sun don't shine, and it got stuck so badly that surgery was required to remove it. The judge briefly explained the facts of the case, whereupon most of the potential jurors started giggling, such that they were kicked out immediately.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Yeah then there is the fact they could have probably just driven them into nearby woods, left the doors open, baited em with peanut butter, and with a little patience, let the real bears do the job. But that would have missed the key ingredient of the security cam footage.

Also i'm curious how one sets up insurance on a stolen vehicle anyway. So many questions.

[Leo Enticknap]

Continuing on the critter theme - Hamsters v. Airbus

More than 130 escaped hamsters ground plane for five days

Rodents run riot on passenger jet after breaking free from transport boxes during flight from Lisbon to the Azores

James Badcock, in Madrid
18 November 2024, 3.31pm GMT

More than 130 hamsters grounded a plane for five days after they broke free and ran riot inside the cargo hold.

The rodents had been on a flight from Lisbon to Ponta Delgada, on Portugal’s Sao Miguel Island, last Wednesday, along with ferrets and some caged birds that were due to be delivered to a pet store in the Azores archipelago.

However, when airport staff unloaded the hold they found that the hamsters’ transport boxes were empty.

The plane, belonging to Portugal’s TAP national airline, had to be grounded until all 132 hamsters were recaptured over fears that they might gnaw through the aircraft’s electrical cabling.

It took maintenance staff at Ponta Delgada Airport until Sunday to root out the last 16 hamsters on the plane.

Only then was the Airbus A321neo finally declared rodent-free and fit to return to Lisbon on a so-called “ferry flight” with no passengers on board.

The hamsters were due to be delivered to a pet store.

TAP Air Portugal said the plane would now undergo exhaustive checks to ensure that no significant damage had been done by the hamsters’ sharp teeth.

Like all rodent species, hamsters continually gnaw at hard materials to prevent their teeth, which grow throughout their lives, from becoming too long.

Portugal’s specialist aviation news site Aviacao TV reported that passengers and their luggage were also on board the flight.

It added: “Upon landing, the teams responsible for baggage collection noticed that the [hamster] boxes had been damaged and that rodents were loose.”

The boxes containing the hamsters were not accepted on a separate flight out of Lisbon as the containers were not considered to be compliant with hold requirements, according to Correio da Manhã, the Portuguese newspaper.

For some reason, it appears that the boxes were allowed on a subsequent flight to Ponta Delgada.

The Telegraph has contacted TAP for comment.

It comes after a horse forced a Belgium-bound Boeing 747 cargo jet to turn back to New York after it broke free on board last year.

Earlier in 2023, a bear freed itself from its crate on an Iraqi Airways flight from Dubai to Baghdad.

Last year, a giant albino rat shocked passengers on a flight from Bangkok to Taipei after escaping from a passenger’s luggage, along with an otter. The rodents sparked a frenzied search on the VietJet plane before being wrestled into plastic bags. In the tussle, the rat bit a flight attendant.

To add to that list, there was an incident back in the early '00s in which a British Airways 747 became infested with bedbugs. The eventual cost of dealing with them ran into the tens of millions (including both decontaminating the plane and the lost revenue while it was grounded), because the chemicals that are normally used to fumigate a serious bedbug infestation were not approved for use on board aircraft.