Latest Auto Insurance Scams

Investigating all day can be a drain on the brain. Every now and then, you get done with your work too late to blog intelligently.
Besides... for an investigator.... the time NOT to plumb the depths of cases and places you've been... or are heading... is before bedtime.
Such memories and experiences are the stuff nightmares are made of.
So rather than miss a day here dredging up a long disturbing bedtime story, I'd like to make a short point.... and then lead you to a great link my friend B.g. sent me.

There's a huge rise in injury and accident claims associated with this alleged recession -- which I really suspect is a depression.
Terminology isn't the point though.
Criminality is.
And staging fake insurance claims is not only criminal, it's also big business.

A while ago a friend called me for advice. Her allegedly perfect daughter's slime-ball older boyfriend "borrowed" her car, which her mother co-signed the loan for. Said slime-ball boyfriend was drunk, went joyriding and smashed two park cars.
Rather than get caught, he chose a rather bizarre path of concealment that involved my friend's daughter. He drove the car to a secluded location and set it on fire. The girlfriend, my friend's daughter, followed him there and drove him home.
Then she went to sleep until she got a phone call the next morning from her mom saying the police called. Their car had been found burnt to a crisp. The daughter feigned shock. She said when she went to sleep the car was parked out front.

In their tiny brains, the daughter and her boyfriend figured the car could be reported as stolen, torched and a settlement would ensue.
Not so.
The auto insurance company's SPU (Special Investigations Units) are much smarter than two pea brains combined.
The SPU Investigators got the whole thing figured out before the daughter and her boyfriend confessed the crime to Mom.

And this true story is just the tip of a criminal iceberg in a sea littered with unempolyment, overextended budgets and predatory car loans.
Unethical people unable to make car payments are reporting their vehicles stolen.
They are staging accidents they think will total out cars and their loans. And they are getting caught.

Others, more criminal initially, than desperate, stage accidents purely for profit.

And this is where I bring to you B.g's addition to this blog post. Just go to the story that follows to get to the the post B.g. sent me to --"Driver's Beware".