Fraudster ordered son to shoot him in the legs to avoid jail in Oregon

A man was attacked and wounded on the side of a road the day before he was to report to prison for a mortgage-fraud scheme in Oregon.

Shannon Egeland told police he had stopped to help a pregnant motorist when he was hit in the head and shot.

That story was false, but the truth was equally bizarre.

Egeland, 41, had ordered his teenage son to shoot him in the legs, so he could delay his prison term and collect on a disability insurance policy.

The shooting broke a bone in one of Egeland’s legs and his foot had to be amputated.

This week, the former developer pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, a charge stemming from the disability insurance policy he applied for a week before the shooting.

Egeland was vice-president of the now-defunct Desert Sun Development, which orchestrated tens of millions of dollars in mortgage fraud, during central Oregon’s real estate boom and bust, from 2004 to 2008.

He was one of 12 people indicted in the scandal. Company officials falsified loan documents and secured construction loans for projects that were never completed, prosecutors alleged.

Egeland was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for his role. He was wounded in the roadside shooting on July 31, 2014.