Man cut off his own leg to stage a robbery and receive an insurance payout
In Brazil, a man shocked investigators when it was revealed that he amputated his own foot to pose as a robbery victim and receive a large insurance payout, reports LADBible.
The man in question is Vanderlei dos Santos Gomes, who worked as an administrative assistant at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia in northeastern Brazil. According to the court, between June and July 2019, he took out four expensive insurance policies whose value did not correspond to his official salary.
The total amount of payouts on these policies could have been about 1.5 million reals (approximately 290,000 US dollars at the current average exchange rate in 2026).
Three weeks after taking out the insurance, the man was found injured in a rural area near the village of Merces in the municipality of São Gonçalo dos Campos — without his right foot. He claimed he was the victim of kidnapping and a brutal attack during which the assailants allegedly chopped off his foot with a machete.
The items he reported as stolen were later found in a backpack along with the severed foot.
After hospitalization and treatment, on August 15 — a few days after the incident — Gomes filed insurance claims with several companies. However, investigators became suspicious due to the unusually short time between taking out the policies and the "robbery."
The police suspected that despite losing his foot, the man might have been attempting to fraudulently obtain insurance payouts. Gomes denies staging the attack, and his defense insists there is insufficient evidence for a conviction.
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