A Mercedes-Benz discovered buried within the yard of a house in an prosperous San Francisco-area neighborhood could have been put there for insurance coverage fraud, Atherton police stated Thursday.
The 1991 500 SL automobile was discovered buried beneath 4 to five toes of earth as landscapers have been doing a mission on the residence on Oct. 20.
There was unused luggage of cement within the automobile, and cadaver canines that made what police stated was “a slight notification of doable human stays” fueled hypothesis about who buried the automobile and why.
No stays have been ever discovered, together with after ground-penetrating radar was used and the San Mateo County sheriff’s workplace forensic laboratory processed the automobile, police stated.
“Detectives are nonetheless investigating this incident and it’s believed the automobile was probably buried for insurance coverage fraud functions,” Atherton Police Chief Steven D. McCulley stated in Thursday’s assertion.
The automobile had been reported stolen to the Palo Alto Police Division in 1992, an insurance coverage declare was made, and the automobile was registered to the person who as soon as owned the property the place the automobile could be discovered buried three a long time later, police stated.
That proprietor, John Lew, has since died, and the property has since modified fingers, police have stated.
Lew was convicted in 2000 of insurance coverage fraud after he paid undercover brokers $50,000 in money and jewellery to sink his 56-foot yacht — value $1.2 million, NBC Bay Space has reported. He had additionally been convicted of tried homicide within the Seventies and served three years in jail, the station reported.
Atherton, a city of round 7,100, is adjoining to Menlo Park, residence of the headquarters of Fb’s mum or dad firm Meta, and fewer than 10 miles from Mountain View, the place Google is headquartered.
It was ranked because the nation’s most costly ZIP code for a fifth consecutive 12 months final November, in line with actual property data firm PropertyShark. It had a median sale value of $7.5 million.
