Industry news roundup: week ended 11 Aug 2014:
While insurers will like to tell you that accident claim fraud is a serious problem right now, the truth is that scammers are caught red handed all the time.
Truth be told, when it comes to spurious personal injury claims, very little fraud actually goes undetected. In fact there number of criminal masterminds operating sophisticated fraud rings are few and far between – most are complete amateurs trying to get some extra cash from their car accident claims after initiating a poorly-planned and sloppily-executed cash for crash type scam.
Want a good example: well hold on to your knickers, as this week there’s not one but two fantastic ones that will show you just how daft some of these individuals are. First up was the story of how a pair of step-siblings had their plan to fake a pair of whiplash claims were uncovered. 62 year old Steven Phillips hired a van, apparently without realizing there was a GPS tracker fitted to it, and then rang up his step-sister 57 year old Terrina Downes and staged a crash on a secluded roadway – then reported the incident as happening somewhere completely different. Needless to say the car hire firm investigated the issue and blew the whole scheme wide open, much to the chagrin of Downes and Phillips!
So yes that’s rather daft, don’t you think? For what it’s worth some fraudsters are even more stupid. Don’t believe me? Well think about this story: a particularly dim-witted scammer named Kyle Denton, who had injured his hand rather badly in a drunken altercation with another man, tried to pass the injury off as stemming from a run in with a pothole that caused him to trip and fall. He almost got away with it too, but for his own absolute stupidity: he had already met with his local authority to start the compensation process, but then the pillock went and posted a picture of his injured finger on Facebook – along with a message about how he had actually been in a punch-up.