Insurance: Crime Pays, After All

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Life-insurance salesmen are normally a garrulous lot. But many are keeping mum after publication this month of a Los Angeles Times article chronicling the latest industry boomlet: door-to-door pitchmen have been plying the city's most crime-plagued neighborhoods and brandishing blood-and-guts clippings from the local press in order to sell cheap policies to residents who might be vulnerable to street violence. The insurance typically costs $10 a month for up to $10,000 in death benefits, enough to cover basic funeral services.

Magdy Barsoum, manager of the Inglewood branch of American National Insurance Co., told the Times that the gory articles were an effective sales tool and that business was "fantastic." He added that half the policies sold, mostly to welfare recipients, insured the lives of children. A company spokesman promptly disavowed the high-pressure sales tactics and promised an investigation.