Ronald Evano took pains to steal insurance money. Literally.
For eight years, Ronald and his wife Mary scammed restaurants, bars and grocery stores in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. The couple swallowed pieces of glass and then fleeced innocent businesses and insurers of hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts, claiming the shards were lodged in food or beverage they had downed.
The Evanos racked up more than $200,000 in fraudulent insurance claims and $100,000 in unpaid medical bills for X-rays and colonoscopies that revealed shards of glass in their stomach and intestines.
Treated at hospitals
One or both of the Evanos were treated at hospitals for swallowing glass shards at least a dozen times between 1997 and 2005. The couple avoided detection by using a variety of aliases, backed by phony ID and Social Security cards. Their often-gory medical dramas usually persuaded the victimized insurers and businesses to pay out and avoid an expensive lawsuit.
The Evanos apparently launched their scheme in August 1997, when Mary—calling herself Mary Dixon—allegedly went to Beth Israel hospital in Boston. She claimed she’d eaten glass at a Boston restaurant, and settled with the restaurant’s insurer for $22,000. Mary went to another hospital a year later, claiming she’d accidentally eaten glass at a Burlington restaurant. That insurer settled for nearly $12,000.
Ronald was admitted to Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md. in October 1999 under the name Ronald Ross. He vomited blood in the emergency room and later passed two large pieces of glass.
Three months later, Evano claimed he swallowed glass in a frozen daiquiri at a hotel bar in Braintree, Mass. He was admitted to New England Medical Center with broken glass in his small intestine and colon.
Needed money for dowries
Both Evanos visited an emergency room with gastrointestinal bleeding in Milford, Conn. in February 2001. Each passed glass fragments, which were recovered.
Evano and his wife are gypsies who needed the insurance money to provide dowries for their sons, he said at his sentencing. But Evano won’t be dancing at weddings any time soon. He received 63 months in prison and was ordered to repay more than $340,000 in stolen insurance and other money.
The Evanos’ fraud recalls a 2005 insurance shakedown by a woman who planted a severed finger in her chili at a Wendy’s restaurant in San Jose, Calif. The fast-food chain reportedly lost $2.5 million in sales because of the bad publicity, and dozens of workers at the company’s northern California franchises were laid off. Anna Ayala and husband Jaime Plascencia received nine and 12 years, respectively, in 2006.
Mary has disappeared and still is at large. She used a variety of aliases including Mary Evans, Lisa Benton, Mary Dixon, Nancy Stevens, Lisa Moore, Mary Reed, Nancy Dixon and Connie Hill.
“I guess [Evano] had to be very committed to the fraud to actually ingest glass voluntarily,” said a spokesperson for the National Restaurant Association. “I’d say incidents where the hoaxer actually eats something are pretty rare.”
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