Three alleged fraudsters have been caught after using the Costa Concordia disaster to try and fake the death of a woman.
Police in Hungary arrested the trio after New York lawyer Peter Ronai detected the scam as he represented the six Hungarian survivors from the disaster.
The attempted fraud was spotted when Ronai, who was in Budapest, was asked to take on a seventh case from the disaster.
He reportedly received an email from a woman that said her daughter, named as Eva Fiedlerne Puspoki, 38, and five-year-old granddaughter were missing aboard the ship.
Ronai was told by the woman that she had no idea why the pair were on board and that he should speak to her daughter's boyfriend.
The lawyer then questioned the boyfriend and he corroborated the story, but he also asked how much they could receive in compensation.
However the following day the man changed his story, saying the child was not missing, and from there it began to unravel.
'The story kept changing and changing,' Ronai told ABC News, confirming that he suspicious grew as it did so.
He told the man that if he did not see the child he would report her missing to authorities, so later that evening he, and a police team, met the man, alongside the child.
She was asked: ‘When was the last time you saw Mummy?’ Her reply was: ‘today’ and that she had been to park to play on the swings.
Ronai repeated the question for confirmation and the girl replied:'I saw her today. I saw Mummy today.'
The 'missing' woman then appeared but continued to say she had been on the ship - but was injured as she jumped off the boat.
The lawyer added to the news channel: 'They confessed to everything after questioning. They confessed to pulling this scam to make money.
'The police arrested them. They didn't take them away to jail, but they'll face criminal procedures.'
Ronai added that he believed that this could be first case of many of people trying to make money from the disaster
24th January 2012
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2091298/Costa-Concordia-disaster-Trio-Hungarian-fraudsters-tried-fake-death-woman.html#ixzz1kQkgrcID
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