A college student in Taiwan sat with his bare feet in a bucket of dry ice for ten hours so he could claim a $1.3 million insurance payout. He lost both legs below the knees and now faces fraud charges instead. The student, identified only by his surname Chang, went through with the scheme in January 2023 after a friend convinced him that gang members were after him and a fake accident claim was the way out.
The friend, a fellow student surnamed Liao, sold him the plan step by step. According to the Criminal Investigation Bureau account reported by Taiwan News, the pair rode scooters to buy dry ice in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District on the night of January 26, 2023, then returned to Liao’s home in Taipei’s Zhongshan District. Liao used cable ties to strap Chang to a chair and lowered his feet into a plastic bucket packed with dry ice. From 2 a.m. until well past midday, Chang stayed bound while Liao filmed and photographed the slow damage.
Two days after the freezing session, Chang checked into the emergency department at Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei. When more than a week of treatment could not save the tissue, surgeons amputated both of his legs below the knees on February 6. Newsweek reported that he suffered fourth-degree frostbite, bone necrosis, and sepsis before the amputations.
The payout never matched the plan. Chang filed claims against eight insurance policies worth NT$41.26 million, about US$1.3 million, saying his injuries came from riding his scooter in cold weather around the country. One insurer paid out about NT$230,000 before investigators started asking questions. The other companies noticed the policies had been bought in the days and weeks right before the incident, found the timeline inconsistent with common sense, and reported him. The New York Post and TheBlaze both documented how the suspicious purchase dates unraveled the story.
Prosecutors in Taipei charged Chang and Liao with fraud and embezzlement in March 2024. Court documents cited by VNExpress state that Liao had lost money trading cryptocurrency and pressured Chang into signing a debt note for about $800,000 before the scheme. The CIB search turned up the plastic bucket, the insurance paperwork, a polystyrene box for the dry ice, eight mobile phones, and a tablet.
The case reads like an extreme version of fraud stories Hypefresh has tracked before. DDG’s discovery that his multi-million LA mansion had no fire insurance showed how a paperwork gap can gut a fortune, and Chang’s case sits at the other end of the same spectrum, where a payout worth eight policies was worth more to him than his own legs.
Medical amputation coverage has its own grim familiarity for readers. LaVar Ball’s foot amputation after a major health scare and LaMelo Ball’s visit to his father before a Lakers game both put faces on the recovery side of limb loss. Chang’s story is the version where the injury was the invoice.
Two years on, the case still circulates as one of the most extreme self-injury fraud attempts ever prosecuted. Morbid Knowledge’s post breaking down the timeline drew fresh attention this week, with commenters wrestling with the same question investigators had: what kind of desperation makes a man trade his legs for a claim he was never going to collect.
