Hands down, this is one of the most disturbing news stories in the past two weeks. A court in Slovenia on Friday sentenced a 22-year-old woman to two years in prison for deliberately cutting off her had with a circular saw to make a fraudulent insurance claim.
The district court in Ljubljana said Julija Adlesic agreed with her boyfriend to have her left hand severed above the wrist at their home in the capitol early in 2019. She was found guilty of attempted insurance fraud. About a year earlier, she signed contracts with five different insurance companies, the courts said. The woman stood to collect more than one million euros (approximately $1,185,000), about half paid immediately and the rest in regular monthly installments.
Her boyfriend was sentenced to three years in prison while his father received a one-year suspended sentence.
The pair had taken her to the hospital, saying she had injured herself while sawing branches. Authorities said they left the severed hand behind rather than bringing it to the hospital to ensure the disability was permanent. But police recovered and it was reattached.
Prosecutors said that days before the incident, Adlesic’s partner searched for information on the internet about how an artificial hand works. They claimed that was another proof that it was done deliberately. During the trial, the woman claimed innocence, saying she would never have cut her hand off deliberately. “No one wants to be crippled,” she told the courts. My youth has been destroyed. I lost my hand at the age of 20. Only I know how it happened.”
The trial has attracted lots of public media attention in the small Alpine state.
“We believe the sentences are fair and appropriate, and will serve their purpose,” Judge Marjeta Dvornik said. (https://abcnews.go.com /international/wireStory/Slovenian-woman-cut-hand-insurance-payout-72946034)
After reading the story you gotta hand it to her, she was dedicated to her plan, even if it was cut short by the courts.
Rumor had it that, after the court case, a reporter asked Julija how the investigators determined it wasn’t an accident to which the woman replied, “I’m stumped. It doesn’t matter, I cut off my left had so I’ll be ‘alright’.” Maybe, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the court costs will eventually cost her an arm and a leg too.
I’m not sure Julija was aware that a bird in the severed hand is worth two in the bush. And then you never know how this might have affected her friendships, like after she gets out of prison, will anyone give her a hand if she wants to go shopping at the second hand store?
The more I thought about it, I think the Bible has some things to say about people who try things that are underhanded. From Proverbs 13:11, “Wealth from get-rich-quick schemes quickly disappears; wealth from hard work grows over time.”
Or from Proverbs 28:19-20, “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty. A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.”
And probably the most applicable from Ecclesiastes 5:13-14, “There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owner to his hurt, and those riches were lost in a bad venture. And he is father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand.”
My heart breaks for this woman and her boyfriend. If she just would’ve followed Jesus’ instructions in Mathew 5:30, they might have avoided prison time. “And if your hand—even your stronger hand—causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.”
May it not be so with you and me that we want to get rich and fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge a person into ruin and destruction.
Always willing to lend a hand,
Mike Altena