Dead Peasants' Insurance

The term 'dead peasants' insurance' is a derisory way of referring to company owned life insurance: a policy or group of policies in which the employer company is the beneficiary on a life insurance policy that is taken on an employee, sometimes without the employee's knowledge or consent.  In usual practice, this kind of policy is taken on key employees whose untimely death may cause a financial loss to the company.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate-owned_life_insurance

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/insurance/12/corporate-owned-life-insurance.asp

But not always.  Some employees may take out policies on lower-level employees such as sales associates and janitors.  This raises some ticklish issues.  For one it seems ghoulish in concept.  And it is similar to the story told by Nikolai Gogol in Dead Souls.  And what if the company holding the policy needed to rapidly increase its operating capital?  Might it be tempted to make redundant those extra employees with extreme prejudice?

Here's a possible scenario.  East Coast Polytechnic Institute took out employer's owned life insurance policies on its professors; and for a nominal fee, also took out policies on the grad students.  However, the professors were not recycling at a satisfying rate; and many were too valuable to meet with untimely "accidents."  Anyway, being a professor is not exactly a hazardous job, unlike being a police officer or fire person or mental hospital worker.  But grad students came cheap; or at least it was the conclusion that the Comptroller had: after all, they were bought cheaply.

So the Comptroller got in touch with some heavies from New Jersey, and made a deal to cull out the herd, so to speak.  The capo sent Guido over to the Poly and that evening he made his first hit.  It was Karin, wearing a lace overlay peasant corset to surprise her sugar daddy who was coming over for a relaxing evening and expected the serf to be up!

Sugar Daddy got an unexpected surprise!  The local police could not account for the rise in seemingly professional hits that seemed to be targeting seekers of advanced degrees.  Previously, they simply had ulcer problems.

When the police investigated, they concluded that the hapless grad student was a working girl who was the victim of some sex maniac!

On another occasion, Guido revisited to kill off some chemistry lab technician.  In his case, he seeded the site with drug paraphernalia and the means to concoct more.  The innocent student was besmirched and that this set up his being viewed as a gang-related killing.

It was hard to account for the homicides of teaching assistants and junior professors.  This was attributed to anger over low grades; and D- and F- students were looked into.

And so on.  Guido was extremely creative with the others; and this crime wave was viewed as the local campus being located in an increasingly dangerous zone.

[I made up this story.  However, some 215 companies did have policies on lower-level employees.  There was even a case where a policy owner on an employee contracted someone to kill that person to collect on the dead peasant policy.

http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2011/07/30/story-reynoldsburg-murder-for-hire.html

Young woman wearing a cute peasant dress.