BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court has convicted two men of staging a chainsaw accident in which one of them cut off the other's thumb and forefinger to claim 40,000 euros (28,170 pounds) in insurance money.
"One man held onto a cutting board and the other sawed his fingers off," presiding judge Juergen Treu said on Friday at the court in the southern town of Wuerzburg.
The 58-year-old landscape gardener then threw away the fingers and claimed money from two different insurers.
Police later uncovered the ruse after receiving an anonymous tip-off. "One of the men had been blabbing about it," Treu said.
The court gave the eight-fingered gardener a probationary sentence of one-and-a-half-years, while his chainsaw-wielding accomplice, a 28-year-old trucker, received a jail sentence of the same length because of a previous criminal record.