A serial defrauder who bilked insurers over the course of 13 years for hundreds of thousands of dollars was done in by … a serial number and silk underwear.

According to the Virginia State Police (VSP), William G. Batten had filed 21 claims involving 10 different companies from Oct. 29, 1995 to Sept. 8, 2008. When he filed his claims, Batten worked the system like a professional, providing insurers with hundreds of pages of property inventories and receipts for items he claimed were stolen. Many times his claims, worth a reported total of $750,000, were denied, and the decision went uncontested by Batten so as to avoid attracting attention. But he certainly had his fair share of successes, and was able to cash more than $250,000 in claim checks.

But as all criminals do, he eventually slipped up. A release from the VSP said that in the fall of 2008, Batten claimed six guns he owned were stolen from his second home, along with approximately $73,624 worth of property that included a stove, a refrigerator, and, oddly enough, his own silk underwear. The problem? Senior Special Agent Dennis Dodson of the VSP's Insurance Fraud Unit noticed that one of the guns Batten reported as stolen was already being held as evidence from an unrelated case in 2002.