Probe into 'insurance-fraud abortions'

(ANSA) - Pavia, January 27 - Prosecutors in the northern city of Pavia have opened a probe into ten people suspected of staging car accidents for insurance fraud, local media reported Tuesday.
    Most of the suspects are Romanian nationals and they include two women who allegedly underwent voluntary illegal abortions in order to increase the compensation received. The accidents under investigation took place in and around Pavia and the cities of Milan and Lodi, also in the Lombardy region. Last week police in the southern region of Calabria arrested four people as part of a probe into presumed insurance fraud involving fake road accidents, including a 2012 case of a pregnant woman who allegedly staged a crash and claimed it had provoked the premature birth and subsequent death of her child.
    Investigators said the birth had in fact been induced.