Industry news roundup: week ended 5 May 2014:
With instances of accident claims fraud on the rise, an increasing number of scammers are finding themselves in hot water with the authorities.
In fact, personal injury compensation fraudsters seem to have made a comeback in some areas, one notable one being text messaging spam. It used to be in days gone by – prior to legislation that banned such activity – you could find yourself spammed by many SMS text messages on your mobile phone every day, especially if you had the poor luck of having your personal details passed on to a claims management company; however with the downfall of CMCs unsolicited SMS texts declined until recently.
Not so any more apparently, as there was an 11 per cent hike in the number of of text message spam sent to British mobile customers in 2014’s first quarter according to a major security firm. The blame for the uptick has been laid squarely at the feet of scammer activity in the personal injury compensation market, though other sectors such as for debt relief, PPI compensation or even payday lending are also quite numerous.
Luckily with this sudden rise in the number of fraudsters and scammers sniffing about like so many hyenas, law enforcement has stepped up their own game in going after these bastards. Inf act one of these idiots was just caught trying to defraud their employer’s insurance company for almost £2 million on a trumped up work accident claim just got tossed in jail for six months.
This absolute pillock by the name of Danny Wykes got into some injury or another at work and then cried wolf, claiming that he was injured so badly that his right arm was now completely useless to the point where he couldn’t ever work again and would need to be placed in the care of others for the remainder of his own sorry life. Of course things changed after his former employer’s insurance company caught Wykes just going about his day unassisted, even showing how he was able to do things like push a wheelbarrow or lift a table without aid.
Now if you ask me this idiot got just what he deserved. I’m glad he got caught and I’m even more gratified that he’s got a 6 month jail sentence out of the whole thing. Let this be a lesson to anyone else thinking they could pull off a scam like this themselves!