Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:50 am Post subject: Lady commits insurance fraud with false receipts
The arrest of an East Palo Alto woman on account of auto insurance fraud has been confirmed yesterday. This news came up at a Bay City news section of a local news website. The 37 year old lady had been accused of filing a fraudulent insurance claim and submitting altered and misleading receipts with regards to a hit-and-run accident that took place in 2004.
Its evident that the loss caused to her vehicle after an accident, was deemed a total loss. In order to prove her right to claim she forwarded altered receipts of vehicle repair and receipts for items nonexistent in her car. The accused is subject to appear in the San Mateo County court on May 9.
It is a shame what people will do. Insurance Fraud is happening more and more these days. People just think that they can get one over on the insruance companies.... _________________ ~Monique~
It's pretty tough to make a fraudulent property damage claim as opposed to an injury claim. As with property, it only pays for the actual loss. So you need to have something to "lose". Much easier to spot this type of fraud.
Most recent one I had was when a man crouched behind a person's pick up truck and claims to have been hit when the driver backed up. Police investigated and asked the driver if the "injured" person asked for money. Turns out that is his MO. He hides behind vehicles and then claims to have been struck and knocked to the ground. He then asks the person for $20 to forget the whole thing. In this case the police were called. The policy have about 100 reports on this person.
Hahaha, thats a cheesy way to make money tcope. Good thing he got caught, he must have swindled a huge sum over the years for that one.
On topic, doctoring receipts seems to be an uncommon way to pull off insurance fraud. Aren't receipts printed from a stored database and can be easily looked-up? As in typing in the date and the receipt number to get the results in digital form?
It would require a bit of effort or bribery to go to the distance of editing the the inventory and all that.
One company got busted for giving false receipts to insurance companies. I posted a link to the story in the news section of the site. _________________ I have a new personal crusade. I'm going to hunt down the people who have strong opinions on subjects they don't understand. Then I'll bop them with this cardboard tube.- Dogbert
I ain't a legal expert, take what I say with a grain of salt.
Does this fraud raise our rates? I would think it would have too. Should we expect the insurance company to keep up with this stuff, instead of paying out bogus claims.
Does this fraud raise our rates? I would think it would have too. Should we expect the insurance company to keep up with this stuff, instead of paying out bogus claims.
Yes, fraud does increase rates. Basically it's like any other business, if the cost of doing business increases, so do the charges.
Bogus claims are paid all the time. Many times the carrier either suspects they are not legit or sometimes they know they are not legit but need to pay them anyway. Chips are stacked against the insurance companies. If they can't prove in court that a claim is fraudulent, they will need to pay it anyway. Most of the time the carrier presses the party and the claim is withdrawn.
I would be afraid to even attempt to commit fraud, I am a big scardy cat when it comes to this stuff, I would always be waiting on that knock on the door, hee hee.
I guess you would think as a normal everyday citizen that the insurance companies would fight a bogus claim, I see where it would be very costly for them now that you point out the court costs and attorney fees of trying to prove it being bogus, was not thinking about that. No wonder so many people get away with it. There are probably people out there that are professional scammers of insurance companies, I don't think it is fair that the rest of society has to pay.
Does there come a point that some one becomes uninsurable do to claims filed?
