Italian Police Bust Bone-Breaking Insurance Fraud Gangs

Eleven people from the Sicilian capital Palermo have been arrested, police said. They include a hospital nurse who would procure painkillers for the victims in order to lessen their screams as their bones were broken. "The two criminal associations broken up as a result of police investigations demonstrated a particular cruelty in the way they hurled cast iron discs like those used in gyms at the victims’ limbs," police said in a statement. A police spokesman in Palermo told AFP that the gangs, operating separately in the city, smashed the bones of the victims, often drug addicts, alcoholics or people in severe economic difficulty, in order to stage fake road crashes and cash in on insurance payouts.