We owe the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, a clearing house for scams information, a word of thanks for these case histories. In their yearly "Hall of Shame," this anchor group, consisting of consumer organizations, government agencies, and insurance companies, came up with a compendium that reads like the Last Refuge for Scoundrels. Here are some horrible examples of how twisted scam artists fabricated their twisted dreams, transformed them into reality. It reads like a tutorial on how to microwave hamsters for fun and profit.

> A Virginia woman, claiming to have found a dead mouse in her soup at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, demanded $500,000 in damages. Autopsy on the mouse revealed no soup in the lungs, and it hadn't been cooked. She is doing a 1-year stretch.

> An Ohio "pain management" doctor threatened to deny pain killers to his patients unless they let him use their names to bill insurance companies for $60 million in drugs. He fraudulently billed insurance companies for more than 100 patients a day, for years. Two of his patients died of overdoses. He is doing life in a Federal slammer.

> A New York doctor paid drug addicts to use their names so he could bill insurers big-time bucks. He filed 2,000 bogus claims for phantom surgeries on a single addict. (This one is a real challenge to figure. On a single patient?) He is doing a 20-year term--before his "debt to society" is repaid.

> A Houston high school teacher promised passing grades to two failing students to set ablaze her Chevy Malibu car so she could collect the insurance money. She got 90 days to think about it.

> A Tennessee oncologist watered down cancer drugs, then billed Medicare for the full amount. Justice struck with a 15-year sentence.

> A Florida dermatologist diagnosed skin cancer, even though employees placed Styrofoam and chewing gum on biopsy slides instead of human tissue. He performed 122 surgeries on one elderly man. He received 20 years to repent for his sins

> A Chicago grain futures executive torched his $1 million home, with his 90-year old mother still in the basement, to make it look like she'd set the fire. His 190 year sentence will indeed give him more than enough time to pray for forgiveness of his sins.

One can only ask: in all of their pathetic machinations, how could these presumably sane people hatch such bizarre real-world scams? Over the top. It's like the scam artist saying, I'm only greedy on days ending in y..

Though justice was served, you cannot help but wonder from these case histories, has the world gone mad? It's been said that the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us. Maybe there is some truth to this.