A 23-year-old man in China has been sentenced to death for murdering his mother, surnamed Xu, in a staged road accident to claim her insurance payout of approximately 320,000 yuan (US$45,000), the South China Morning Post reported.
The man, surnamed Lu, conspired with two friends, Yang and Cheng, to execute the plan. Lu instructed his mother to stand by a rural road, where she was struck by a car driven by the other two.Police arrested all three after discovering inconsistencies in their alibis. The Taizhou Intermediate People’s Court in eastern Zhejiang province found Lu and Yang guilty and handed them death sentences. Cheng, who assisted in the crime, received a seven-year prison term. The verdict was only recently made public.The scheme followed an earlier incident in April 2023, when Xu was injured in a road accident and received 320,000 yuan in insurance compensation. Lu and his accomplices spent the money on luxury items, believing insurance claims were an easy source of income.Originally, the trio had attempted a less lethal scheme, aiming to injure Xu to claim insurance. That plan failed, leading them to harm Lu’s father with a bamboo stick to obtain 1,300 yuan (US$180) in compensation. Yang later suggested staging another accident to kill Lu’s grandfather, but Lu refused, citing the grandfather’s role in raising him.Lu admitted to police: “Yang told me that if we kill my mother and receive the insurance compensation, my family’s life will be improved a lot. So I agreed to kill my mother.”The case underscores growing concerns about insurance fraud and the extreme lengths some individuals may go to obtain payouts in China.