Two men in Taiwan, Liao and Zhang, come up with a plan to give Zhang frostbite on his legs in hopes of collecting insurance money.
Who is Liao and what challenges does he face?
So this guy, his name's Liao. And poor Liao, he just lost everything. So Liao's 23, he goes to college in Taiwan, and he's broke. So he tries making some money trading crypto. But the poor guy just fails. Big time. And Liao's like, damn, what am I gonna do now? And that is when he comes up with an extremely terrible idea to get rich. So he reaches out to his friend, this guy,
Zhang to help him with this plan. And Liao and Zhang, they went to high school together and now they go to the same university. So they know each other pretty well. So Liao goes to Zhang and he lies to him like, dude, I need your help. There are dangerous gang members after me. And Zhang is like, aight. So then Liao explains this extremely terrible plan to him.
He wants Jong to take out a bunch of insurance policies on himself. Then he wants him to accidentally get frostbite and cash in those claims. And then Jong can give him some of that money and he can pay off these dangerous gang members that don't actually exist. And if there's any money left over, they can split it. And Jong hears this plan and he's like, aight.
So they set this scheme into motion. And over the next few days, Jong signs up for eight different insurance policies. In total, they're worth about 1.3 million US dollars. Then Liao asks Zhang to agree to sign a legal note that says when Zhang gets paid from the insurance, he agrees to pay Liao 800,000 US dollars of it. And of course, Zhang's like, aight.
And then one night in January, when the weather's finally right, the two of them ride around town on their scooters. They drive around for a while and then they stop at a local store and buy a bunch of dry ice. And then they go back to Liao's place and he gets out a chair. And he has Zhang sit in it. And then he gets a big container and he makes Zhang put his feet inside.
And then he fills the container up with dried ice. And Liao's like, this is probably going to hurt a lot, so I have to tie you up so you don't move. And Zhang's like... And so Liao zip ties him to the chair. And as they wait for the frostbite to set in, Liao snaps a bunch of photos of Zhang for some reason.
So anyway, Zhang is sitting there with his feet in this dry ice and 10 hours go by and he's still sitting there. And when Liao finally lets him out of the chair, Zhang is hurting. I mean, he's got frostbite. Like he can't feel his legs and he needs medical attention. So they go to the hospital and the doctors look at Zhang's frostbitten legs and they're immediately like, what the f**k?
How did this happen? And Zhang tells them that he and Liao were just out riding scooters the night before and that it was so cold out that his legs got frostbitten. And Liao's like, yep, that's exactly what happened. Here's the thing about doctors, though. They tend to know things about certain injuries and ailments. So they look at Zhang's legs and right away they know he's bullshitting.
I mean, for one, his frostbite is neat and symmetrical across both legs, which is just unlikely to happen. Plus, there are no marks from his socks or shoes, which shows he wasn't wearing any. And who the hell would ride a scooter barefoot? I mean, clearly this story isn't adding up. Anyway, so the doctors do what they can to treat Zhang, but Zhang's frostbite ends up being really bad.
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