Although FC&S does not normally address life insurance, this fraud is extremely egregious and was the most heinous of the week by far. A DC-area man is facing life in prison after a judge found him guilty of murdering his fifteen-month old son in order to collect over $500,000 worth of insurance money.

The man was found guilty of a capital murder charge and attempted false pretenses for trying to commit insurance fraud on April 13, 2017. He will automatically receive a life sentence. The county prosecutors on the case convinced the judge that he plotted to murder his toddler son to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from three life insurance policies that he had personally secured in the months preceding his son's death. At the time of the death, the child was staying with his father on an unsupervised visit through a child custody arrangement. The father called 911 to report that his son was unresponsive and cold. The child was taken to two different hospitals but was pronounced dead on October 21, 2012.

Since the toddler had a history of seizures, and had suffered several in the months leading up to his death, the father said he died as a result of a seizure. The autopsy report found that the toddlers oxygen supply had been cut off and the judge presiding over the case stated that the “evidence was simply overwhelming” that a seizure could not have caused the death of the toddler, and the defendant had time during his unsupervised visit to drown or otherwise suffocate his son before calling emergency response.

The defendant had severe money problems in the months leading up to the death of his son, and the timing of text messages seem to suggest a correlation between the son's seizures and the defendant's more positive outlook on his financial situation. The judge for this case also found the defendant's decision to take out three separate life insurance policies on his infant son, all three with high premiums that the defendant, already in a financial struggle, would have trouble paying for, to be over-the-top. He also lied on the insurance applications, claiming that the boy's mother was dead so he could avoid informing her of the life insurance policies he had taken out on their son.

The presiding judge found the evidence overwhelming that the defendant had caused his son's death in order to receive monetary benefits.

The defendant will be officially sentenced on June 22, 2017.