Cruise Ship Disaster: Con Artists Try To Cash In
Jan. 24 2012, Published 11:30 a.m. ET
By Debbie Emery - Breaking Celebrity News Reporter
Families of the victims of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster are still coming to terms with their grief, and already heartless criminals are swooping in to profit from the tragedy.
A trio of con artists have allegedly plotted to make a profit out of the devastating incident by claiming their “daughter” and “granddaughter” was on the ship, reported ABCNews.com.
As Breaking Celebrity News previously reported, the massive liner capsized on January 13 off the coast of Italy after it crashed into a reef four miles off course. The ship carried 4,200 passengers (120 of which were from America), so far 16 bodies have been found and 16 are still missing.
The latest revelation in the watery disaster came after New York lawyer Peter Ronai, who speaks Hungarian and is representing six Hungarian survivors, stumbled across a suspicious claim.
The Manhattan attorney was in Budapest when he was approached a few days ago and asked to take on another client, he explained.
"I got an email saying, 'Can you please help us? My daughter is missing. She was on the Concordia,'" Ronai said. "I ran out to her house and basically she told me her 5-year-old granddaughter was missing, too."
The distraught woman claimed that she didn't know what her daughter, Eva Fiedlerne Puspoki, was doing on the ship, but she begged Ronai to meet with her daughter's boyfriend, who corroborated the story.
Rather than heartfelt concern over 38-year-old Puspoki's safety, the pair asked how much money they could expect to profit from her death.
The next day they approached the lawyer and said they'd been mistaken, and that the little girl wasn't missing after all.
"The story started changing and changing, more and more," said Ronai, who was growing increasingly suspicious. He told the boyfriend that if he did not see the child, he would have to report a missing person to the police.
The next time he went to visit the alleged boyfriend,