Two women are accused of taking out life insurance policies on homeless men, then killing them. LA Times Link.
This was an old scam, reaching back to at least the nineteenth century, if not earlier. British scammers would take policies out on bums, then kill them. That led to the "insurable interest" requirement: unless you have an "insurable interest" (e.g., as a wife, a child, a parent, a business partner) in a person, you couldn't obtain a policy on a person. It's even embodied in today's Internal Revenue Code (Section 101), which taxes life insurance proceeds (which are generally tax free), if a beneficiary obtains life insurance by assignment.
These women got around the insurable interest requirement by posing as the homeless men's family members or business partners.
Also interesting: The women have histories of being highly litigious. Just more evidence that sin grows and mutates. If you do one sin, you're more likely to do others.
