It may very well have been. Used GA planes aren't cheap but they aren't thaaaat expensive.
>the bank will want to make a claim.
It would take a very foolish bank to write a loan on a plane (or boat) that is secured by said object. It's probably secured by something else and even if it's not they probably won't care as long as the payments keep coming. Remember, they're money dealers, not plane dealers. They'd rather have the money.
Lots of well off people still purchase things via loans. Also various net worth estimations online place him between $1M to $1.5M. That's not the kind of money where you automatically just pay cash for something that might be $50k to $100K, especially when net worth at that level is often (not always) tied up in a primary residence. There's no certainty here. And regardless, insurance is required on private aircraft, owned or loaned.
Him making a false claim would be insurance fraud, but if it's bought on a loan and there's an insurance policy favoring the bank, then the bank definitely can and will make a claim - it's just that the insurance company will then attempt to recover the money from this pilot since he's at fault, and is likely to succeed.
"likely to succeed" if the individual has the money for them to get... they may succeed in getting a judgement otherwise, but if the individual doesn't have the money, they likely won't get it.
But if the individual lied to the insurance company about having deliberately caused the crash, it is still probably insurance fraud, whether or not the individual was the one filing the claim, and can be prosecuted as such.
I’d normally say you get to pick one - make the video OR make the insurance claim, but given how stupid this pilot was I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to get both (and arguably NOT trying to claim the insurance itself might look suspicious)
