Credit-crunch leads to boats being suck or dumped for cash
Credit crunch-hit US yacht owners are abandoning their boats and making insurance claims, the New York Times reports.
It claims: “They often sandpaper over the names and file off the registry numbers, doing their best to render the boats, and themselves, untraceable. Then they casually ditch the vessels in the middle of busy harbors, beach them at low tide on the banks of creeks or occasionally scuttle them outright.”
It says there is “a flotilla of forsaken boats” and several states are drafting laws against derelicts and say they are aggressively starting to pursue delinquent owners.
“Our waters have become dumping grounds,” said Major Paul Ouellette of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “It’s got to the point where something has to be done.”
It gives the example of Brian Lewis of Seattle who failed to sell his boat, Jubilee, when no one would pay his asking price of $28,500. Lewis told the police that maintaining the boat caused “extreme anxiety,” which led him to him drill a two-inch hole in Jubilee’s hull last March.
The boat sank in Puget Sound, and Lewis told his insurance company it was an accident. His scheme came undone when the state, seeking to prevent environmental damage, raised Jubilee. Mr. Lewis pleaded guilty last week to insurance fraud.
Todd Schwede, an insurance investigator in San Diego, said the number of suspicious cases he was handling had roughly tripled in the last year, to around 70.
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