A British surgeon has been jailed after deliberately freezing his legs in order to have them amputated as part of a fraudulent insurance scheme, a plan prosecutors said was fueled by both greed and a disturbing sexual obsession with amputation.
Dr. Neil Hopper, 49, a former vascular surgeon with the National Health Service (NHS), admitted two counts of insurance fraud and three counts of possessing extreme pornography at Truro Crown Court in southwest England, according to BBC News.
Legs amputated after self-inflicted injuryThe court heard that in 2019 Hopper submerged his legs in a mixture of ice and dry ice for eight hours, causing such severe tissue damage that they required surgical removal.
He later claimed to insurers that he had developed sepsis, enabling him to collect fraudulent payouts worth more than $625,000.
Prosecutor Nicholas Lee told the court that Hopper had performed hundreds of amputations on patients during his career before engineering his own. His motivations, Lee said, were a mix of “a long-standing obsession with removing parts of his own body” and a “sexual interest in amputation.”
“It seems to have been a long-standing ambition of his,” Lee added, noting that Hopper appeared to enjoy the media attention that followed his operations, including multiple television appearances.
Links to extreme pornographyHopper was arrested in March 2023 after police investigating EunuchMaker (an extreme body modification and mutilation website) discovered that he had purchased videos from the site.
EunuchMaker’s operator, Marius Gustavson, was sentenced to at least 22 years in prison last year for running what judges described as a “sadistic” network of body mutilation, per the New York Post.
The court was told that Hopper’s pornography offenses were limited to material he bought online and did not involve children.
Defense attorney Andrew Langdon said Hopper had suffered from body dysphoria since childhood, describing his feet as “unwelcome extras” that had caused “persisting never-ending discomfort.”
Hopper admitted that he “bitterly regretted” lying about the cause of his amputations to insurers, friends, and family; but said he did not regret having the surgery itself.
“Following the operation, I was totally overwhelmed by support from friends and family, which made it even more difficult to tell them what had really happened,” Hopper told the court.
Langdon added that the revelations had come as a “shock” to Hopper’s loved ones, describing the case as “very difficult to comprehend.”
Fraudulent spending and sentencingProsecutors said Hopper used the fraudulent insurance payouts to buy an RV, a hot tub, and home improvements, as well as to give gifts to his wife. He returned to work less than six months after his amputations, having been fitted with prosthetic legs.
Hopper was struck off the medical register in December 2023. On Thursday, Judge Simon Carr sentenced him to a total of 32 months in prison; 22 months for the two counts of fraud and 10 months for the pornography offenses, to be served consecutively.