I don't want to read a novel before being able to understand what this is about. At least the article could provide a quick glimpse at what the fraud scheme is.
I kept reading for 5-6 minutes and then lost interest.
I kept reading for 5-6 minutes and then lost interest.
Guy is in this line of 'work' because he is an adrenaline junkie. It brings certain side benefits-- dealing in obscure obsolete aircraft and parts gives him means of leisure and more than a little swagger, without the pain of asset depreciation. Convinces himself, a romantic interest, and not many others, that he's James Bond.
Once his 'business' got big enough, it attracted the right attention and has given the guy an opportunity to remake himself yet again, this time from jail.
But just like any other business, there's always another company willing to take a chance at a high-but-not-too-high premium, especially if you're flashy enough with their agent. If the previous losses looked "plausible" or "unlikely to happen again" or the insured "has the financials of a good risk" or whatever, the policy will get written.
First of all, the first paragraph is about a suspicious plane fire - the plane literally burned in half sitting in a hangar. That should provide you some hint about what the fraud scheme is going to be. There's even an animated image of a plane on fire! Did you need the author to print "this is a story about insurance fraud" in big bold print at the top of the story?
Secondly, comments like this are really worthless on HN, it adds nothing to the discussion and as you point out, you didn't even read the article. Why even both writing a waste of a comment?
I understand where the op's reading frustration is coming from. For some urls that point to pdf files or racy content, we might put informal warning tags such as "[pdf]" or "[NSFW]". But there really isn't a meta tag such as "[human_interest_story]" to warn readers of this type of article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-interest_story
There's nothing wrong with human interest stories (and even long form texts of it) but it's tedious for many who aren't expecting it. (I.e. some global readers aren't familiar with TexasMonthly and its editorial focus on long-form human interest articles.)
One type of reader just wants the mechanics of the insurance fraud explained. Thus, the human names -- whoever they are -- are not important -- because they will be forgotten 5 seconds after finishing the article. If it's the "wildest" insurance fraud, what makes it more wild than other insurance scams? Unfortunately, many articles "trick" readers with a compelling title about some <situation> but the actual article is mostly about <person(s)>. Some readers care more about details of the insurance deception than the escapades of Mr. TR Wright.
Another example of this mis-alignment between some readers and the author is the "Why it's so hard to find dumbbells in the US (vox.com)" article that was on HN front page today. The actual article starts off with human-interest stuff by mentioning people like like Andrew, Logan, Fread, etc and goes on like that for many paragraphs. But the HN top-voted comment extracts the relevant explanation that actually answers the question put forth in the title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24270770
Exactly me. And I was not familiar with TexasMonthly, despite having lived in the US (California) for the last 8 years. (I am originally from Europe)
The fact that I did not read the entire LONG article is precisely what made me comment on how lengthy the article is, without providing enough context to know how the fraud scheme was perpetrated.
Yes, that is what the article was intending to do.
Because now the top reply of his comment is a summary of the article. So, not that useless of a comment
They try to protect against that by requiring that you can only get policies on something you have an "insurable interest" [2] in (i.e. independent reason to value it and not want the insured event to happen to it).
They also try to closely calibrate payouts so that they're not significantly more than the market value of the loss (ideally, a bit less) and thus prevent the "moral hazard".
Yes, sometimes you can get ahead of them and get a policy paying $X where X is significantly greater than the actual value to you, and have an expected value (profit * probability - costs) greater than zero. But you will almost certainly have to commit insurance fraud to do so, by hitting one of many "tripwires" that the insurance contracts have: lacking insurable interest, misrepresenting market value, actively causing the incident yourself, etc. [3] Any of those would give them an out.
[2] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/insurable-interest.asp
[3] My comment on a similar story where the same logic applies; in that case, the fraudster exploited the fact that they weren't charging enough to cover the probability of the event, and insured events she didn't have an interest in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528221
That's why I argue and can debate #3. I'm not an expect, I don't know how it works, this was a waaaaay ago (2015.)
So, you know, my personal anecdote changes perspective and that sort of mindthink.
So the fraud is really misrepresenting what you lost, not insuring it for a set value when you buy the policy.
Airplanes and collector cars do not have a readily available source of "comps" to determine value and in both cases, the cost to recreate a given condition is typically higher than the value of that car/airplane in the open market. I can have an airplane that is "worth" $250K to me, that I could only sell for $200K, but that would cost $300K or more to recreate exactly by starting with an available airplane and re-customizing the avionics and airframe mods exactly. In such a case, I can probably get a policy written for any agreed value as low as I want (at the risk that I'd get cut a check for that amount and have no airplane in the event of a loss) and pretty close to $300K.
I don't think you're the audience this article is intended for. The article is written intentionally to be like a novella -- it's for a magazine. News/journalism sites are much more "just the facts ma'am"-focused.
The final paragraphs have a good summary of what type of character it is about:
> If he hadn’t gotten caught when he did, his business only would have escalated toward riskier, more-dangerous illegal dealings. “I probably would have had a RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations] indictment […];
https://www.flyingmag.com/young-entrepreneur-and-pilot-faces...
My overloaded uBlock says otherwise...
In our age of short time spans and competition for attention you would think news magazines would be concise and to the point, I would even say, lapidary. But for some reason they became an outlet for graphomania?
There are terse news outlets, but news magazines whole reason for existence, from the beginning, is providing deeper, more complete coverage of fewer stories than “short-deadline, break-it-first” media like TV and newspapers.
Seriously, if your attention span is too short to read a medium-length article then you should really self-reflect about what's going on in your life.
You may prefer the opposite, and thats OK too. It doesn't necessarily mean there is anything to significant reflect on in either of our lives. Or that one of us has the 'wrong' preference.
Some people enjoy reading.