A UNIVERSITY clerk arranged for his own foot to be chopped off in a twisted attempt to win £220,000 in insurance payouts.
Vanderley dos Santos Gomes claimed his leg had been hacked off by gangsters in Brazil – but he has now been found guilty of faking the attack.
Vanderley dos Santos Gomes had his own foot amputated in a bizarre attempted fraud scam Credit: Newsflash
Gomes tried to con cops and insurance companies – but miserably failed Credit: Newsflash
The bizarre scheme was cooked up to supplement his lowly income as an admin assistant at the Federal University of Reconcavo da Bahia.
Between June and July 2019, Gomes took out four large insurance policies which would pay out up to £200,050 if he became permanently disabled.
Mere weeks later, Gomes told police he’d been kidnapped and robbed before gangsters hacked off his right foot with a machete.
He was discovered with his foot missing on the side of a road in the village of Mercês, in southeastern Brazil.
The severed foot was later discovered inside a backpack alongside belongings he had reported stolen.
Emergency services raced to bring Gomes to hospital – where the scammer swiftly submitted claims to his insurance companies.
Court docs note the claims had been filed just days after the so-called attack on August 15, 2019.
The spot where Gomes was found with his foot missing after the fake robbery Credit: Newsflash
The large sums of money and suspicious timing quickly rang alarm bells for police.
Gomes denied charges of faking the injury and his lawyers argued that there was a lack of evidence to condemn him.
But forensic experts said the horror injury was too clean and precise to have been caused by machete-wielding thugs, as Gomes claimed.
They believed it had instead been carried out using specialist surgical techniques – suggesting that Gomes had lied about the amputation.
Gomes was sentenced to two years in prison – but this was changed to 720 hours of community service and a fine of £1,113, according to court docs.
He started serving his time in May after several attempts to appeal the decision had been rejected by the courts.
Lawyers working on the case said it was the strangest insurance fraud scam they had ever seen.
Eze Chidiebere Paul
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