HANDOUCH!
A YOUNG woman who deliberately sliced her hand off with a circular saw so she could claim a £925,000 insurance payout has been jailed.
Julija Adlesic, 22, from Ljubljana, Slovenia, hatched a macabre plot with her boyfriend to chop off her left hand above the wrist — and then leave it at home when they went to the hospital so it could not be reattached.
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Adlesic was found guilty of attempted insurance fraud by a court in the city and sentenced to three years.
Prosecutors said a year before she sawed her hand off she signed up to five different insurance policies.
Adlesic stood to collect more than £925,000 — about half immediately paid and the rest in regular monthly installment — if she was disabled by the amputation.
Just days before the incident in early 2019, police investigations found Adlesic's partner, Sebastien Abramov, searched online about how artificial hands work.
This was used as evidence to prove the amputation was part of an exceedingly elaborate insurance scam.
After sawing off her hand she was taken by her boyfriend and his dad to hospital.
They told medics she had injured herself while sawing branches.
But prosecutors claim the couple were scammers.
They suspected the severed hand was left behind for a very good reason.
It was alleged the devious duo wanted to make sure the disability was permanent. That way they'd receive the full whack in insurance payouts.
But their plans were foiled after police became suspicious, having recovered the severed appendage.
Surgeons then reattached the hand.
'MY YOUTH HAS BEEN DESTROYED'
During the trial, the woman protested her innocence, saying she would never have deliberately chopped off her hand .
She said: "No one wants to be crippled.
"My youth has been destroyed. I lost my hand at the age of 20.
"Only I know how it happened."
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The bizarre trial has attracted lots of public and media attention in the small Alpine state.
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Sentencing her to three years, judge Marjeta Dvornik said: "We believe the sentences are fair and appropriate, and will serve their purpose."
Boyfriend Abramov was sentenced to three years in prison while his dad received a one-year suspended sentence.
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