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.

We often hear news stories about those who’ve been wrongly convicted being freed from jail, sometimes after being incarcerated for many years. The newly freed often sue the legals system for wrongful confinement.

Three men in Birmingham, England who were recently freed after respectively spending 18, 18 and 11 years in prison for murder, were, in separate trials, awarded a total of 2.16 million British pounds.

Unfortunately for these men the Court of Appeal ruled in March that the mean will each have to give back 25% of their award to the government as compensation for their “room and board”. You know, those tiny cells they stayed in and the awful prison food that they were served for years.

Isn’t that outrageous!

Can you believe this … when I was a little kid I got hit by a school bus! Bad enough that it was a school bus, but even worse that the driver did it on purpose!

The bus driver got tired of the kids lining up for the bus and crowding the door every day as she pulled the bus up to the curb. As an adult I can now look back and I figure that she was scared that she might one day hit a child if one was pushed in front of the bus.

So, being tired of the kids crowding the curb, what does she do? As she’s approaching one day, and while I’m bent over tying up a lose shoelace, she begins to open and shut the bus door several times. She probably did this so the kids would see it and have to back up to make room for the space the open door took up, thus making them move backwards away from the edge of the curb.

Great, maybe that was a good idea, but I didn’t see her coming, and she obviously didn’t see me bent over tying up my shoe lace!

The bus door hit me hard as the bus rolled up to the curb and I went into a spin and landed several feet away from where I’d been. I couldn’t get up. You know why? Well, because the stupid bus driver broke my back!

I ended up being in traction in the hospital for uhm at least 2 months! A couple of my thoracic (upper back) vertebrae had been cracked. Any higher and she might have broken my neck. I’m lucky to be alive and not paralyzed. Stupid bus driver. I have chronic upper back pain to this day because of her.

My parents got in touch with a Car Accident Attorney immediately. I was about 10 years old at the time, and in the hospital for several months so I don’t know all of the details of what happened, but I know that my parent sued the bus driver personally, and sued the school. The car accident lawyer won the case of course. I’d hope it wasn’t the hardest case he’d ever fought. I mean read my story, the bus driver was in the wrong wasn’t she?

My parents didn’t get a lot of money for the accident. Maybe a couple of thousand- which back in the 70’s was quite a bit of money I suppose. They put it in a bank account for me and it gained interest, and I used it for my college studies. That money helped me move to Toronto to go to school. If it hadn’t of been for that money maybe I would have never left Brantford, and I probably wouldn’t have met my wife either.

So remember folks- if you get in an accident, especially if you are injured, get yourself a car accident lawyer.

This past October, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, was in Pittsburgh campaigning for U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum. Apparently Jeb Bush antagonized anti-Santorum demonstrators by blowing them a kiss. In the chaos that ensued Bush was forced to take refuge in a train station supply closet.

In other news Kansas state Rep. Vaughn Flora was charged with a misdemeanor after an October political event when he allegedly roughed up an anti-abortion protester dressed as a cockroach. Why would a protester dress as a cockroach? I think that’s a story in itself.

Last August, in Tampa, Tony Katz - a public-access TV host - threw a chair at his guest, county commission candidate Joe Redner, hitting him in the head after he had called Redner a liar and Redner had called him fat.

I thought politicians and TV Hosts were supposed to be refined folk? I guess not if this kind of behaviour proves anything.