Evil on the A666 as crash-for-cash cheats put lives at risk
Mail online / 23rd May 2009
Insurers are calling for more police forces to get involved in the fight against fraudulent motor accidents. Although these often involve innocent drivers, they are staged by criminals who then submit fake insurance claims of up to £50,000 a time.

Figures from the Insurance Fraud Bureau show that there has been an 11 per cent reduction in organised 'crash-for-cash' crime in the past two years, led by a notable reduction in areas where the police have become heavily involved, including Luton, Harrow, north-west London, and Walsall. But the bureau, set up three years ago to lead the fight against organised fraud, also says that crash-forcash crime is rising in areas where police are not engaging with insurers, such as Liverpool, Halifax and Ilford and Barking in east London. Richard Davies, the bureau deputy chairman and fraud manager at Axa Insurance, says: 'We targeted some of the biggest gangs first, but new ones are emerging all the time and we can only combat them with the help of police.' Three main types of accident come under the crash-for-cash label. The most dangerous are induced accidents, where crooks deliberately engineer a crash with an innocent driver. This will typically happen at a roundabout or motorway junction, with the fraudster's car manoeuvring in front of a target vehicle then suddenly braking to trigger a crash. Staged accidents involve two vehicles both controlled by fraudsters. They set up a collision or damage the cars using hammers and then submit claims. A third variation is the paper claim. Here the cars never even touch each other, with crooks submitting a claim based around bogus paperwork. Scott Clayton, claims fraud manager at Zurich Insurance, says: 'As well as multiple passengers, all of whom claim injuries such as whiplash, claims can be inflated by high bills for courtesy cars and repairs. A seemingly minor bump can inflate into a £50,000 bill.'