Glass-eater sentenced for insurance fraud

A federal court in Boston sentenced a man to more than five years in prison for his role in a multi-state insurance fraud scheme. Ronald Evano and his wife ate glass fragments and collected more than $200,000 in compensation, according to officials.

Evano also was ordered to repay $340,000 for his role in defrauding restaurants, grocery stores, insurers, hospitals and doctors in the scheme in which he and his wife claimed that there was glass in the food they ate. The couple pulled the stunt in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Prosecutors said the two were treated at hospitals for glass ingestions at least a dozen times. They allegedly collected payments from insurance companies but never paid their hospital bills.

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.