Episode 10 Claimed and Shamed

Insurance fraud has reached epidemic levels in the UK.

It's costing us more than £1.3 billion every year.

That's almost 3.6 million every day.

Deliberate crashes, bogus personal injuries, even phantom pets.

The fraudsters are risking more and more to make a quick killing,

and every year, it's adding around £50 to your insurance bill.

But insurers are fighting back,

exposing just under 15 fake claims every hour.

Armed with covert surveillance systems...

That's the subject out the vehicle.

..sophisticated data analysis techniques...

-Police!

-..and a number of highly skilled police units...

Police! Don't move, stay where you are.

-..they're catching the criminals red-handed.

-Just don't lie to us.

All those con-men, scammers, and cheats on the fiddle

are now caught in the act, and claimed and shamed.

A simple speeding ticket leads to the bust of

a sophisticated fraud operation...

The scale of the fraud was massive.

..a wannabe master forger needs some serious lessons in spelling,

and speaking...

His behaviour changed quite dramatically.

He started to gabble...

..to the point that he was actually losing control.

..and a gamble that a betting shop wasn't fitted with CCTV

doesn't pay out.

When dealing with large scale frauds,

sometimes it's the smallest mistake that cracks the case wide open.

In this case, a simple speed camera fine led to

a fraud that was worth almost a quarter of a million pounds.

If a motorist is caught speeding on camera,

it's a straightforward process.

A form is sent out to the registered owner of the car, and they're

asked to fill in the details of who was driving at the time.

That person then receives an appropriate penalty.

Some try and cheat the system by entering false details.

However, officers like PC Graham Radcliffe of the

Greater Manchester Police are there to catch them.

The case first came to light when a Mercedes car activated two

speed cameras, one in Manchester, and one in the Midlands.

Information was sent to the owner of the Mercedes to find out

who was driving the car when it was caught speeding.

The forms were returned to the police,

saying that a woman had been behind the wheel.

That woman was subsequently convicted.

But there was a twist - she'd NEVER been in the car.

She wasn't aware of the fact that she'd been nominated in the

first place, and it was as a result of her subsequently complaining

the fact that she'd been wrongly convicted that my inquiry began.

Little did he know where it would lead,

or what he was about to uncover.

Graham established that the woman was indeed telling the truth.

She had nothing to do with the speeding Mercedes.

Complex investigations into how this woman's name had wrongly ended up

on the form led Graham to an accident management company,

called Optimum Claim Solutions,

owned by a man called Jason Brown.

The company did have some legitimate business,

but Graham was quickly able to establish that Brown was

involved in some very dubious activities indeed.

He'd found that he could make more money out of falsely creating

accidents and making claims,

particularly very high credit hire claims for hire cars,

for accidents that never existed, and personal injury claims.

So, Brown was using his accident management company illegally

in two distinct ways.

Firstly, he'd make up totally imaginary accidents and claim

that passengers had been injured in order to get pay-outs

from insurance companies.

He'd also tell insurers that he'd provided very expensive hire cars

for people waiting for their crashed cars to be fixed.

Again, the accidents would be totally fictitious.

Graham arrested Jason Brown,

and both his home and business premises were thoroughly searched.

What was uncovered was clearly a large scale fraud in relation

to false credit hire claims to insurance companies

following accidents, accidents which never happened.

Graham worked closely with those companies

who had been targeted by Brown.

One of them was insurance providers Allianz.

Mihir Pandya heads up their fraud department.

As it turned out, Jason Brown was already on their radar.

His vehicle had allegedly been involved in an accident

resulting in multiple whiplash claims.

The total value of the claims submitted to us was in

the region of £30,000.

A significant sum, and not something that would be paid out

no questions asked.

When we receive claims of this kind, it's routine to do some enquiries.

Almost immediately, they discovered fundamental problems.

So many discrepancies.

Some of the people were getting...

Which car they were in, they were getting that wrong.

They were using old addresses for Jason Brown when they were

asked to say what details they'd just swapped.

It even transpired that another car - the premium for that

insurance was paid by Jason Brown himself.

The multiple inconsistencies and the apparent links back to Brown

called the whole claim into question.

We started to have suspicions that this, in fact,

was a staged motor accident, so we contacted Mr Brown.

He ignored our letters. We tried to call him, he ignored our calls.

After a few months,

all the claims for the whiplash injuries were dropped.

Thought that was the end of the matter,

and it was a year later when Greater Manchester Police contacted us.

Still to come -

the police uncover yet more of Brown's insurance fraud shenanigans.

He's just become over-confident with the fact that

he can get away with it, but didn't think it through properly.

And sometimes, love hurts.

A woman finds herself with a criminal conviction after an

attempt to protect her boyfriend.

Think before you act.

Now, when you pop down to the shops, the last thing on your mind

is getting hurt, but accidents can and do happen anywhere.

Most shops make sure they have insurance,

so if someone is injured on their premises,

and it's in some way deemed to be the shop's fault,

then the injured person can be properly compensated,

and the pay-outs can be quite hefty.

Royal Sun Alliance provides insurance for many retailers,

and it's John Beadle's job to make sure that, when someone makes

a claim against one of his clients, it's 100% legit.

It's not unusual for people to put in spurious claims alleging

that they'd suffered injury in premises such as supermarkets,

and numerous other locations,

but all these premises are routinely covered by CCTV,

and it is amazing, really,

that people still attempt to make these kind of allegations,

which are clearly refuted by a simple review of the CCTV footage.

So, when you're out doing your shopping,

never forget Big Brother is watching you.

Back in 2015, one of John Beadle's team members received

a call from a man who had fallen over in a shop that RSA cover.

So, in this particular case,

the allegation was that they'd entered a betting shop,

from a well-known high street chain,

and had slipped on a wet floor, causing injury.

It was slightly unbelievable, but not impossible.

I guess somebody could have spilled a drink,

or it might have been raining outside

but, of course, the first thing we would do in such circumstances

would be to review the CCTV.

Unbeknownst to the claimant,

the betting shop was covered by CCTV cameras.

And from the moment they reviewed the footage,

the odds were firmly stacked against this particular gambler.

You see, they didn't slip on the wet floor at all.

It was a mistake by the person in sitting down on his stool,

which caused him to fall.

The gentleman just puts the stool too far in,

and when he goes to sit down, he actually falls off the back of it.

The claimant clearly hadn't known that he was being watched

by security cameras, and this was his major slip-up.

Frankly, when we first got this claim,

we couldn't believe that the person was making it,

because it's quite clear what the cause of the accident was,

and it was nobody's fault but his own.

When confronted with the evidence, the claimant understood that,

like him, the story just didn't stand up.

We told him that, as a result of this investigation,

we would not be paying this claim,

and he clearly must have thought twice about it,

and the claim went away.

John's investigations had put a stop to RSA having to pay out

compensation of around £6,000 for this clearly dishonest claim.

Insurers are wise to this type of spurious claim.

We will investigate each and every case fully.

There is no quick pot of gold available here.

My advice to people is - don't do this, you will get caught,

and there can be severe penalties if you are found guilty of fraud.

Now, coming back from a lovely, relaxing holiday to find

your luggage has been lost is something we all dread.

That growing panic as it becomes clear that the carousel

is never going to spit out your suitcase,

and all you can do is watch as, one by one, your fellow travellers

mosey off with their bags, leaving you standing there all alone.

If you think I'm being dramatic, well, you'd be right,

but believe me, it happens.

This is what recently happened to a man flying back from

his holiday in Europe.

Luckily, though, this clever chap had thought to take out

travel insurance, and he put in a claim for his lost luggage.

The case was handled by Claire Mitten,

an Operations Director at I-Cog Claims Management.

I-Cog are a fraud detection company that specialise in exposing

dishonest claims. Their operatives are trained in the technique

of conversation management.

Just by talking to someone on the phone,

they can tell if that person is being genuine.

In other words, they're human lie detectors.

The case of the missing luggage was referred to Claire

-to be thoroughly unpacked.

-When the claim was presented to us,

it actually looked like it could be a genuine claim.

He'd had confirmation from the airline in relation to

the luggage going missing.

We'd also received his boarding passes and his tickets

to confirm he had actually travelled to Paris at the time.

So the claimant's luggage had genuinely disappeared, but it was

the detail of what was inside that gave Claire pause for thought.

It was when we got to talk about the items that were supposedly in

his suitcase that alarm bells started to ring,

and we actually realised that he couldn't even describe

the simplest of items to us,

so whereas somebody would be able to explain to you,

"It was a patterned shirt, it was a striped shirt," he was only

able to tell us, "It was black, it was brown and it was plain."

However, one thing the claimant COULD remember about

his clothes was that some of them were very expensive indeed.

The claim in total was worth £4,000.

£2,000 of that was clothing, especially designer labels,

with £2,000 worth of cash.

There was also some female shoes that he was claiming for, when

actually he travelled alone, so this didn't make any sense to us either.

Hey, doesn't everyone wear stilettos in Paris?

Anyway, understandably, the insurance company asked their

customer if he had proof of purchase for any of the lost items.

We received an array of receipts from the insured.

One was from a high street store, which was genuine,

and we believe these items HAD been in his suitcase at the time.

The other one was from an online retailer.

Again, it was genuine, it was exactly how we expected it to look.

However, when he came on to the other items,

such as the designer labels, the receipts were very interesting.

-Interesting is one way of putting it.

-For starters,

they were both presented to us on an A4 piece of paper.

Very unusual, in this day and age,

for a receipt of this nature to be like this.

There were spelling mistakes.

He was claiming for suits, so a three-piece suit,

but he actually put on the receipt that the shop sold SUITES,

as in three-piece suites.

He even spelt Gucci wrong.

At the bottom of the receipts, he'd also intended to put,

"Thank you for your business,"

but unfortunately he'd actually put, "Thank you for YOU business".

Two companies wouldn't make this mistake.

Armed with these clothing receipts in hand, Claire called

the claimant in the hope he'd own up to faking the receipts.

When we discussed our concerns with the insured,

his behaviour changed quite dramatically.

He started to gabble, to the point that he was actually losing control.

He was also using delaying tactics,

so he was asking us to put information in writing.

He was trying to buy himself some time to think about

what he wanted to say.

The claimant was sticking firmly to his story,

as yet unprepared for the damning evidence Claire had up her sleeve.

Unbelievably, he wasn't willing to admit that he'd faked the receipts.

This guy may have been one of the most stubborn claimants Claire

had come across, but it's fair to say he wasn't one of the brightest.

And there would be another huge mistake in his claim

that made a mockery of the whole episode.

Not only did we have the problem with the receipts,

there was also quite a clear problem with the dates that he'd provided.

The luggage was actually lost in January 2014,

but the items he says, or alleged, he had bought were purchased

in December 2014, so 12 months after the incident actually occurred.

Yep, you heard right.

Rather incredibly, the claimant was trying to get money back

for clothes he hadn't yet bought when his suitcase was lost.

Claire put this to him.

The claimant wasn't budging from his story.

Despite a thorough dressing down from Claire,

he wasn't willing to admit any wrongdoing.

At the beginning of the call, when I planned my call,

I had no doubt that the insured would actually confess that these

were fraudulent receipts that he'd created himself.

I also thought, if he didn't go down that route,

he would look to withdraw his claim.

He continued throughout the whole call.

He did not give in, he was not going to give himself up, really,

and say that he had made a fraudulent claim.

I was really surprised by this, at the end of the call.

Claire may have been impressed by the customer's resilience,

but she wasn't taken with his skill as a master forger.

In relation to the fraudulent receipts that I've seen before,

these were probably some of the worst I've seen.

In fact, they were almost quite comical.

There wasn't just one mistake,

it was absolutely riddled with mistakes, from spelling to grammar.

It was just quite embarrassing for the insured, really.

Even though Claire hadn't been able to get an admission of guilt,

she recommended to his insurers not to pay the claimant a penny.

With the type of work that we do here at I-Cog,

you will get found out if it's an exaggerated claim.

You might think it's easy just to add on an extra mobile phone,

just add on an extra item of clothing, or whatever,

but the way that we ask the questions and the way that we

get information from you,

we will be able to understand that these claims are exaggerated.

Coming up - a DIY enthusiast who attempted to defraud

his insurance sees his claim come crumbling down.

Not only would we have to cancel the policy,

but we'd also have to seek the money back,

for the sums that we paid for the replacement of the items.

Now, despite what you might see in the movies,

these days, it's not that easy to steal a car.

Hi-tech security features are now standard, but if a thief gets

hold of your keys, well, there's not much you can do about it.

Mike Brown is Direct Line Group's Head of Counter Fraud Intelligence.

His company recently dealt with a claim for a stolen car.

The circumstances, as portrayed by Miss Kitchen,

is actually she'd returned home from work that evening, had a shower, and

it was while she was in the shower, she alleges, her keys were stolen

by an unknown intruder, and on looking out the window,

she saw that her car had gone.

An audacious theft, to say the least. However,

the mystery surrounding the fate of her car was quickly cleaned up.

Subsequently, then, what happened was there was then

communications by Thames Valley Police with Direct Line,

in respect of her vehicle,

which had been involved in a single vehicle road traffic accident.

So, the thief had come into her house,

taken the keys while she was in the shower, and then crashed her car.

Although no-one had been injured, and no other vehicle involved,

the damage was significant.

The claim was £4,000.

Right from the start,

there was something questionable about the account of the keys.

You know, this young lady had come in, having a shower,

as it was alleged,

and at the same time somebody had walked into her flat, removed

the keys from the dining room table, and subsequently stolen the vehicle.

The whole story did not connect.

These concerns were only intensified when Direct Line liaised

with Thames Valley Police.

Their investigation into the collision turned

Miss Kitchen's story on its head.

They genuinely believed that the driver of the vehicle

at the time of the accident was, in fact, her partner.

This information robbed her burglary story of any truth.

The so-called thief that "stole" her car, then crashed it,

was her own boyfriend, who then fled the scene.

The circumstances of the accident are, as yet, unknown,

but it would appear, and be extremely questionable,

as to why her partner left the scene of the incident.

The motivation for the stolen keys story was to protect her partner,

and to ensure that she wasn't out of pocket when it came to the repairs.

It would appear from the circumstances, as we are led

to believe by the police,

that a payment would not have been honoured by Direct Line Group,

if the true facts had been made at the time of the claim.

But the truth did come out,

and the police don't take kindly to being lied to.

When we analyse what has occurred,

you've got Miss Kitchen making a false statement of claim,

which is fraud by false representation,

and then you have the distraction of the police services themselves.

Police resources are strapped at the best of times, and when they are

distracted investigating malicious complaints,

it is the genuine public that suffer,

and those who are generally in need of the emergency services.

In view of this, the decision was taken to prosecute the claimant.

Miss Kitchen appeared before the Crown Court in December last year.

She was given a 12-month community order,

and also ordered to undertake 150 hours' unpaid work.

It also entitles Miss Kitchen to be entered onto

the insurance fraud register.

The industry as a whole are entitled to search that register when

considering risks when onboarding a policy holder.

In other words, it could affect her chances of getting insurance,

loans, or a mortgage.

By concocting a key theft story, Miss Kitchen has paid a heavy price.

Honesty is always the best policy, and, you know, think before you act.

If your intentions are to deceit or defraud Direct Line Group,

then all I will say is - be warned.

We have the tactics, we have the methods, we have the skills,

and the knowledge.

You will be identified, and you will be held to account.

Earlier on, we examined a case where a simple speed camera investigation

led to the exposure of professional insurance fraudster, Jason Brown.

Brown owned a claims management company,

called Optimum Claim Solutions,

that was proving to be involved in an array of fraudulent scams,

including claims for accidents that were totally imaginary.

Things weren't looking good for Brown.

He was already in custody at Greater Manchester Police,

when his solicitor turned up with arms full of evidence

he thought would help the case.

A bundle of files were left at the front desk.

Because these files were left, I looked at them.

And Graham didn't like what he saw.

One of the cases involved in this fraud was this same Mercedes

that had activated these speed cameras.

This car had allegedly been involved in a collision, in Failsworth,

what we call a three-car shunt, and the Mercedes was the fault car.

And the person recorded as being the driver of the Mercedes at

that time was the registered keeper.

I knew, because I'd previously interviewed him,

that he'd never had possession of that car, so straightaway,

this accident was likely to be a fraudulent one.

Another red flag was the high occupancy rate of the vehicles,

in particular the first car, which was a people carrier.

It's supposed to have had seven people in it, and I think

there were seven claimants to the insurance company for

personal injuries in relation to that vehicle.

And there were another two personal injury claims

from the middle vehicle.

The more claims, the bigger the pay-out.

As if this wasn't enough to discredit the claim,

there was a final nail in the coffin.

As it transpired in the inquiry,

all three of those vehicles were insured by Jason Brown.

Well, the whole job was clearly fraudulent.

The three-car collision in Failsworth was another

made-up accident, and, of course,

the seven people claiming to be injured were full of lies, too.

But it was just the tip of the iceberg.

Graham recovered another 400 files from

a residential address linked to Brown.

The scale of the fraud was massive. Around £225,000.

Another scam that Brown was pulling off was duping multiple insurers

into paying for the same hire car to act as a replacement vehicle.

One car appeared on numerous claims.

That particular vehicle, on one occasion,

was allegedly out on hire to two people at the same time.

One of those, for the value,

or the value put in to the insurance company, was £40,000 plus.

The evidence was mounting substantially against

Jason Brown, when Graham's investigations uncovered

yet another accident that looked likely to be fictitious,

this time involving two cars.

One of the drivers was a man called Billy Barnett, who had also

featured as a passenger in the previous Failsworth collision.

Billy Barnett was Jason Brown's step-son.

Graham managed to get hold of the original phone call between

Billy Barnett and the insurance company.

The most striking thing about the phone call

is that it's not actually Barnett.

It's Brown, pretending to be Barnett.

My feelings are that he's just become over-confident

with the fact that he can get away with it,

so I think he felt brave in making this telephone conversation,

and felt he could ad lib his way through it,

but didn't think it through properly.

Brown's arrogance also extended to the methods

he used to recruit people to take part in his scam,

revealed when Graham interviewed the alleged injured passengers.

The majority said that they were recruited whilst they were

out drinking in a pub, or stopped on the street.

What they were saying is, yeah, they did commit the fraud,

but they were recruited for it actively.

The person doing the recruiting was Jason Brown.

In the space of 12 months, Graham's work had mushroomed from

a case of speeding fines into fraud on an exceptional scale.

During the course of this investigation,

I arrested 24 suspects.

There were 154 statements taken, and around 1,000 exhibits.

The ringleader, Jason Brown,

and others who had played an active part, were brought to justice.

There was no arguing with the evidence against them.

Everybody that was charged with the fraud-related offences

pleaded guilty.

The judge came down hard on the ringleader of the £225,000 scam.

Jason Brown, the main man in the inquiry,

was sentenced to five years and two months.

And every penny he dishonestly made will have to be returned.

If he doesn't pay back the £200,000,

then that will ultimately result in him serving an extra term of

imprisonment, and the figure will remain with him for life.

It was a fitting end to Graham's 30-year police career.

He has since retired from the force.

It was ultimately going to be me last inquiry.

It didn't set out that way, when I first took the case,

because I didn't think it was going to turn into what it did turn into.

Were it not for the speed fines, Jason Brown might have got away with

his scam for longer, but he didn't count on the determination

of Graham and his team to bring him to justice.

Now, everything is bigger in the US, nowhere more than in Texas,

the Lone Star State.

For Texan fraudsters,

it's not enough to simply fake a personal injury.

They go further.

Much further.

A few years ago, a tragic motor accident claimed the life of

Clayton Daniels, husband of Molly Daniels.

He died when his car burst into flames after leaving the road,

and plummeting down a cliff.

The fire was so intense

that Clayton's body was burned beyond recognition.

Molly and her two young children were left devastated.

Luckily, Clayton had taken out a 110,000 life insurance policy,

so Molly and the kids wouldn't have to struggle.

In fact, far from going to pieces,

Molly seemed to take the heartbreaking loss in her stride.

A Texas Ranger, who spoke to her, noted that she was strangely calm

throughout the interview,

and, only a few weeks later, it emerged that Molly

had embarked on a new relationship, with a man called Jake Gregg.

But the new life Molly had created was a fiction,

and the whole thing was about to crash and burn.

Right from the start, there had been question marks about the accident.

No skid marks had been found on the road,

indicating that there had been no attempt to brake,

and the fire that destroyed the car had originated in the

driver's seat, not the fuel tank.

What's more, it had been accelerated by lighter fluid.

But what really brought the insurance claim to

a dead halt was evidence from the body in the car.

Investigators took one DNA sample from the corpse,

and one from Clayton Daniels' mother.

There should have been a match, but when the results came back,

there was a shock in store.

The body wasn't Daniels'.

The police went back to search the new couple's home, and found a

forged birth certificate and a fake driver's licence under the name

Jacob Alexander Gregg.

So, who was Molly's new man?

Step forward...Clayton Daniels.

The fiery car accident had been staged to get an insurance pay-out.

Afterwards, Clayton had laid low,

and then re-emerged with a different hairdo and a new identity,

but that still left the question of the body in the car.

And here's where things took a much darker turn.

It turned out that Clayton had done the unthinkable -

he had dug up the grave of an 81-year-old woman,

called Charlotte Davis, who had been dead for six months.

He had then dressed her body in his clothes, placed her in the car,

set it alight, and then pushed it off the edge of the cliff.

When police investigated Clayton further,

it emerged that he was also wanted for skipping bail

after pleading guilty to other serious crimes.

Molly revealed her true colours

when she tried to explain why they targeted Charlotte.

According to her, "We felt, because she was older,

"there would not be much family impact, if any."

But the jury totally disagreed when the case went to trial.

They awarded Molly the maximum sentence for her crimes,

20 years behind bars.

Clayton also received 20 years for insurance fraud, 15 years for arson,

and ten for desecration of a cemetery, to be served concurrently.

Coming home to find out that you've been broken into

is always distressing.

It is a horrible feeling, knowing someone has been inside your house.

Taking out home insurance helps soften the blow,

in case of a theft,

and gives us the peace of mind that, if we're broken into,

we'll be reimbursed financially, or any stolen items replaced.

In October 2014, Lloyds Banking Group received a call from

a customer called Paul Monday,

who'd taken out contents insurance with them back in 2009.

Paul was calling to let them know about a burglary at his property.

David Berry, the technical fraud manager

at Lloyds Banking Group was involved with the case.

When we first had the claim presented to us

everything looked perfectly in order,

everything appeared to be genuinely stated, so to all intents

and purposes, nothing at all looked wrong with the claim.

So, basically, the sort of things you'd expect to find

in a garden shed.

However, there was one unusual item on the list of what was taken.

Fair enough, not an everyday piece of sports equipment,

but Paul Monday was claiming he had a monoski

nicked from the back of his shed.

Paul Monday was a happy customer.

All his stolen tools would be covered

and replaced with brand-new ones.

However a few weeks later the team informed him

that his monoski was not covered,

as it needed a specialist sporting equipment policy

and it was then that the tide started to turn.

Monday suddenly seemed to remember a further item that had been

stolen from his shed - a drill.

When we explained that we couldn't cover the monoski,

the customer asked us to consider the claim for the drill

and explained, when we asked him why he hadn't told us

about the drill previously, that he believed he'd already reached

the limit of cover when actually he hadn't.

It seemed plausible enough so the team asked Monday whether

he had anything to prove his ownership of the drill

and he responded by supplying a photo.

But suspicions had been roused

and the team bored down into the detail of the image of the drill.

EXIF data or property data held on digital images

is very simple to access.

You click on the properties of the digital image and it will

provide you with information such as the date on which the photo

was taken, it will provide you with a time to the actual second,

some of them will actually even provide you with the GPS

location of where the photo was taken, as well.

What they found out from analysing Paul Monday's drill photo

opened up a massive hole in his story.

It was absolutely key.

It told us that the photograph had been presented and taken

after the item was said to have been stolen.

So, miraculously, Monday had managed to snap a shot of his drill

after the burglary.

The team confronted him with this evidence.

The customer wasn't immediately able to explain that but after

some further discussion he did actually admit to us that he'd

taken a standard image from the internet, he'd presented it to us

as the item that he had claimed for and he hadn't actually

considered what the consequences of that might have been.

And the consequences were really bad for this particular scammer.

We explained to the customer that he had committed fraud in terms

of the conditions of the policy and that the repercussion of that

would mean that not only would we have to cancel the policy

but we'd also have to seek the money back for sums we had paid

for the replacement of the items that he'd already received.

Paul Monday was less than impressed.

The customer complained to the Financial Ombudsman Service

and, in fact, the Ombudsman, on looking at all of the facts

presented by both the customer

and ourselves in terms of how we reach that decision, concluded that

we had actually made a fair decision and that the claim shouldn't stand.

Monday's objections had been overruled and he was instructed

to play nearly £1,500 back to Lloyds -

the value of all the new tools he had received.

But it didn't end there.

The case was referred to the City of London police's

Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department

and Monday found himself in front of a magistrates' court.

He pleaded guilty in court to charges

of fraud by false representation and as a result of that

he received a 12-month conditional discharge.

It may have been that Paul Monday's shed had genuinely been broken into,

but by lying to his insurers and providing false evidence

he's ended up owing them nearly £1,500

and has a permanent criminal record to boot.

Nobody likes paying more than we have to for everyday services,

but this is exactly what's happening with insurance fraud.

Scammers and conmen are swindling their way to pay-outs

that they don't deserve.

The knock-on effect is that the extra costs result in ever

increasing premiums.

We're getting hit in the pocket and it's not just organised

criminal gangs to blame.

Exaggerated household claims also take their toll.

But instead of getting away with it,

more and more of these fraudsters are being Claimed And Shamed.