A True Crime Story

In 1990 Mark Brown went on holiday to America for two months where he spent over £1,200 more than he had planned. His mother had sent him money from England by mail to cover his expenses. He had insured himself before going to America and so he decided on the last day to go to the police and say he had been robbed, and with the report from the police he could claim the money back from the insurance company.

He was so afraid about just happily walking into the police station that he decided that the most convincing way was to fake the robbery in the street. He left all his bags in the hotel and went to a rather dangerous part of New York. After walking up and down the street for half an hour deciding what to do, he stood in front of a cigarette machine and bought a pack of cigarettes. Suddenly he screamed, ‘Help, someone, my bag has been stolen’. To his surprise several people stopped and one man told him to cross the street to where a policeman was standing.

All the people followed him across the road and he was now very nervous but he knew he had to continue with his story. He told the policeman that he had left his bag on the floor while buying a pack of cigarettes and that when he looked down it had disappeared. He then began to describe all the things that were in the bag. He had practiced this in the afternoon. He told the police he had lost a video camera, jewellery, money and clothes. He wasn’t nervous at all. He had always liked acting and totally convinced the police. He gave a description of a man he had seen following him and was told to go to the police station later that day to collect a report for his insurance company.

When he got back to England he sent the police report to the insurance company who told him that every item over £100 required a receipt. He busily spent the next weeks collecting receipts from all the people he knew. He then sent the receipts off to the company and waited. After about five weeks he was sent another letter from the insurance company telling him that he hadn’t taken enough care of his bag and that they would not pay any money.

Mark couldn’t really complain, after all the story was all a fabrication. However, two days later he received a telegram from the police in New York telling him that a bag that fitted his description had been found in the house of a recently convicted criminal and that some of the contents had also been found. Two weeks later he received a video camera, clothes and jewellery from the police in New York. None of it was, of course, his.