Genius of the Week: The Sympathetic Sextuplet Scammers

Talk about a sympathy story. It's hard enough to pop out one kid at a time, how about six? Only, the greuling experience of labor would be just the beginning. After that, all the pain hits the wallet. Six little ones to clothe, feed, and care for.

It sounds like a perfect scam: an overwhelming situation, borne by a fate everyone would goo and gahh over. Yet, wouldn't faking birth to six babies at once be too much for a swindle? Not in Missouri.

Sarah and Kris Everson connived $3,700 from their neighbors to support a set of nonexistent newborns. The story had been strange from the beginning--Sarah was 45 when she announced the miracle-like conception. The story caught on, Kris reached out to his co-workers for cash. Neighbors wrote checks.

Only, now the Eversons have pled guilty to faking the birth. Sentence: four years of probation and pay everyone back. Still, here's the best part of the story.

The couple told community leaders in March about the imagined infants, and why had their birth been kept a secret? Sarah and Kris claimed that a court order kept the entire ordeal hush-hush because a family member was out to kill them.

Genius.

(Photo from flickr. Note: these are random babies, not the sextuplets from Missouri. In case you were wondering.)

Comments

[brittany]

hahahahaha, that is genius.