Odd news, Strange Animals, Funny pictures, Dumb Criminals

Odd Planet

October 28th, 2007 at 12:01 am

Fraud scheme included eating glass!

Did you hear about the man, Ronald Evano, that was sentenced last month to more than five years in jail due to his role in a fraud scheme in which he and his wife are said to have intentionally eaten glass fragments in order to collect more than $200,000 in compensation from a multi-state insurance company?

Evano was also ordered to repay as much as $340,000 for his role in defrauding insurers, grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals and doctors in the scheme in which both he and his wife claimed that there was glass in the food that they had eaten.

The couple filed fraudulent insurance claims worth more than $200,000 and incurred more than $100,000 in unpaid medical bills between 1997 and 2005 across several states.

Evano plead guilty to charges in federal court to 20 counts of mail fraud, conspiracy, wire fraud, identity theft, and making false statements on health care matters and social security fraud.

Evano’s wife, Mary, remains a fugitive. An arrest warrant has been issued for Mary Evano listing the same charges that her husband plead guilty to in August.

Evano asked the judge for mercy, saying in court that he and his wife are members of the minority Roma community, and needed the money to pay for dowries and other costs associated with the marriages of his sons under cultural practices.





October 21st, 2007 at 12:01 am

A different kind of swarming!

Thousands of bees escaped when a truck that was carrying their hives ran off the highway and overturned near a Montana community.

One State trooper, Dell Aman, stated that he’d been stung twice, but he didn’t think anyone else was injured.

“The public was in no way in danger, as long as they didn’t stop to get out of their vehicles,” he said. “If they did get out, they figured out pretty quickly that that wasn’t the place to be — no pun intended.”

The truck had been traveling from North Dakota to California when it veered into a ditch along interstate 94 just at the exit for Huntley. The driver of the truck wasn’t injured in the accident, but he was cited for alleged careless driving.

The truck had been carrying 465 beehives which amounted to nearly 13.7 million bees!

Luckily most of the bees behaved and stayed in their hives but a few thousand got loose.

Once the weather cooled in the evening the bees returned to their hives.

Good thing this didn’t happen in the middle of a city! I’d imagine more people might have been stung if it had.





June 28th, 2007 at 1:46 am

Fabulous women join Her Fab Life

Ladies, if your socially active and like to know about the latest trends, hot spots, fashion trends and styles, the newest restaurants, spas, salons, bars or retail openings then you’ve got to check out Her Fab Life.

Her Fab Life was created by PMP media Canada, a developer of several niche based websites. Her Fab Life is the first website that they’ve developed and by all accounts it’s going to be a hit.

Across the top of the site you’ll see tabs marked New Styles, New Restaurants and Bars, New Stores, New Spas/Hotels, New Events, For Him, and Hot Guy of the week. Click on any tab to find out about fabulous new trends, places to go or shop or as the last tab says the latest Hot Guy of the week. This weeks Hot guy is musician William Tell.

Register with Her Fab Life so that you can participate on the site by rating listings and leave comments. You may also add content to the site once you are registered. Just click on the Add Content link at the top of the page and you can add content to any of the main areas of the Her Fab Life website.

When you click on the title of a post in any of the categories you’ll find that you will not only be able to let leave a comment but you’ll also be able to bookmark the article on one of the popular social bookmarking sites such as del.ic.ious, digg, google or technorati.

Don’t delay, visit Her Fab Life and see what’s going on in your area!





March 1st, 2007 at 1:23 am

Black bear in back yard

A woman living in a small community west of New York City was startled when she looked out her kitchen window and saw a black bear looking back in at her.

“I was making a pot of coffee, and I turned around and there he was in the window looking at me,” said Lorraine Grossman.

The womans scream spooked the 211 pound bear who ran and climbed a nearby tree. He reached a height of 40 feet and wouldn’t budge. The woman found herself entertaining more than 50 neighbors who gathered in her Maplewood home to watch the bear in the tree for five hours. The bear didn’t do much more than yawn though.

“He’s really kind of cute,” said Joanne Penaluna.

State wildlife officers eventually shot the animal with a tranquilizer dart. After hanging on for about 10 minutes, the bear dropped into a net. It was taken away, tagged, then released at a state wildlife management area.

“It’s not something you get to see every day — bears falling out of trees,” said Pete Samek, whose 5-year-old daughter, Lucy Rose, watched from his shoulders.

Bears usually hibernate from December to March, though they can be easily roused, said Larry Katz, chairman of the animal sciences department at Rutgers University.

“It’s a little early for them to be waking up,” he said. “Someone or something probably walked over the area where it was hibernating.”

Authorities said the bear, a male estimated to be 2 or 3 years old, might have been snacking on birdseed and likely wandered in from the nearby South Mountain Reservation.