A Penn. couple is in a real rut after they were both arrested and charged with staging an accident to collect more than $15,000 in insurance payments.
Michael McLucas and his wife, Laura, discovered that their Jeep needed a $5,000 repair. Unwilling to pay for the work, they opted to drive the vehicle into a ditch.
Their plan was fairly basic: drive the Jeep off of the road, blame the accident on a few deer, and collect on the insurance payments. It was rugged, involved off-roading, and no one would be the wiser–or so they thought.
The couple went through with their plans on Nov. 30, 2007, when Michael McLucas reported to the Pennsylvania State Police and his insurance company that he had rolled his 1994 Jeep Cherokee down an embankment in order to avoid hitting three deer. Attorney General Tom Corbett said that the daredevil couple received more than $15,000 from their insurance company to settle the claim.
Unfortunately for the daring duo, there were quite a few hitches in their little scheme, one of which was their own bravado. According to reports, Michael McLucas, 38, asked neighbors for advice about how to protect his neck in an accident, and even showed one neighbor a soft neck brace that he was considering using during the staged rollover.
Apparently McLucas didn't want to seem too obvious though, so instead of wearing the neck brace, he wore a towel around his neck as he intentionally drove his Jeep over an embankment and into a creek, where he proceeded to accelerate the engine until it stopped.
Now the rubber is really hitting the road for the couple, though, and the charges are steeper than the embankment McLucas drove over. Michael McLucas faces a total of five criminal charges, with two counts of insurance fraud, one count of theft by deception, one count of criminal conspiracy, and one count of false reports to law enforcement authorities. Laura McLucas is charged with two counts of insurance fraud, one count of theft by deception, and one count of criminal conspiracy.
The married malefactors were released on $10,000 unsecured bail. Their preliminary hearings will be held later this year in Lancaster County Court.
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