Episode 6 Claimed and Shamed

Insurance fraud in the UK is reaching epidemic levels,

and it's costing us billions of pounds every year.

Deliberate crashes,

bogus personal injury claims,

even fake deaths.

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

And every year it's adding up to £50 to your insurance bill.

Insurers are fighting back,

armed with covert surveillance systems...

Everything that we do has to remain cutting-edge.

..sophisticated data-analysis techniques...

Without having something like this, we would always be one step behind.

..and a newly-formed, dedicated police unit...

-Police! Get back!

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

All those conmen, scammers, cheats on the fiddle...

now they're caught in the act

and claimed and shamed.

Today, the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department

-busts into the house of a suspect.

-All right, we've got a warrant.

One claimer discovers that "no win, no fee"

doesn't apply to fraud.

Somewhat surprisingly and shockingly,

found that, no, she was not on that bus.

And a supposedly injured fraudster's story falls apart.

The most striking thing of the 12 days' footage is

there was no wheelchair.

Being a fraudster is a full-time job,

as one would-be conman found to his cost

when he failed to keep up his deception whilst under surveillance.

In 2006, lorry driver Graham Loveday

was the victim of a minor road traffic incident.

The details were passed to the driver's insurer.

On the face of it, this was a straightforward low-speed collision,

as CEO David Slater reveals.

Mr Loveday was driving along the road and he passed a petrol station,

and as he passed the petrol station,

our policy-holder pulled out and hit the rear wheel.

Mr Loveday initially went for a medical report,

and that report initially said he'd got a whiplash injury

with some bruising,

and that the whole injury would resolve itself

inside five to eight months.

So far, so simple. Graham stood to gain

the standard amount of compensation for whiplash -

around £2,500.

But 12 months after the accident,

things seemed to take a dramatic turn for the worse.

Then, subsequently, went for a second medical report about a year later.

And, in fact, at that medical report, the doctor was unable to assess him

because he said he was unable to get out of his wheelchair.

It was an astonishing development.

Mr Loveday's condition had deteriorated to the point

where he claimed he often required a wheelchair

and even on good days had difficulty getting around.

And he subsequently claimed that he was pretty much wheelchair-bound

and obviously had constant pain all the time

and was unable to do many of the basic tasks of everyday living

and needed extensive care from his wife.

It wasn't just physical injuries.

He also said he was suffering psychologically.

Mr Loveday also claimed that he had a phobia of car travel.

So he literally said that if he got into a car,

that would immediately make him vomit.

With such extensive injuries,

the claim for treatment and care was mounting.

Our legal advice was that in this case,

the cost to us would have been approximately £1 million.

The insurer was becoming suspicious.

I think the first thing that rang alarm bells to us with his claim

was when we received that second medical report.

Certainly if someone has got an injury so severe

that they're going to be wheelchair-bound,

normally that would be apparent very early on.

It just didn't add up.

We had these two medical reports

showing completely different injuries,

so clearly we wanted to get to the truth

of whether the injury really was anywhere as severe

as he was now alleging.

The insurer went straight to a group

of specialist undercover investigators, led by Tim Young.

Ultimately, our task is to gain an objective slice of their life,

so it's simply a case of turning up

and maximising the amount of footage that we can get,

so that others within the legal process

can form a good, objective opinion of someone's capabilities.

Their mission was to covertly film Graham Loveday

to see if he was as injured as he claimed.

The Graham Loveday case centred around the fact

that we were dealing with an individual

who was purportedly suffering from some form of physical disability.

But not only that, there was psychological trauma as well.

Around the area of his home address and the around the overall area,

he was presenting himself as a male who was actually quite disabled.

And walked in such a way

as to suggest that he had a fairly significant disability.

What they saw at first seemed to fit with his statements,

but then they got a tip-off that changed everything.

We'd been informed that he was likely to be going on holiday,

so we placed him under surveillance over a given period of time.

'The claimant is now getting inside the driver's seat...'

The man who claimed to be sick when he was inside a car

was observed driving for several hours to his holiday destination.

He was found to travel from where he lived in South Wales

all the way to the Isle of Wight.

'Now we've a left indication, left indication.'

So a significant journey

for someone who is purportedly nervous of driving

and incapable, I guess, of sitting for long periods of time as well.

The surprises continued.

Far from appearing tired or anxious after the lengthy journey,

on arrival, he seemed rejuvenated and was walking freely.

The contrast in his abilities and his overall demeanour

was very significant.

He was totally relaxed.

As he unwinds in what he thinks is the safety of a secluded campsite,

he starts to demonstrate signs of his true physical ability.

I think one of the most interesting pieces of footage that we gained

was him lifting a generator.

'He's now lifting something heavy out...'

And actually starting the petrol generator, so like a lawn mower,

you know, starting the engine in that way.

'Seems to be pulling at something,

'i.e., a generator pull-cord to start.'

On his return from holiday,

he continues to perform a variety of strenuous physical activities.

There were a number of other specific examples, so for example,

he's seen servicing a car,

which obviously involves a lot of bending over,

which clearly you would not expect someone who is wheelchair-bound to be able to do.

The length of the surveillance meant

they hadn't just caught him on a good day.

There was 12 days' footage in total

and we'd obviously been told that Mr Loveday was wheelchair-bound.

He needed a wheelchair if he travelled any distance at all.

And the most striking thing of the 12 days' footage is

there was no wheelchair.

It was very clear to us in this case

that Mr Loveday was grossly exaggerating

the extent of his injuries.

It was really rather difficult not to be absolutely certain

that this was a fairly audacious attempt at a major fraud.

They had all the evidence they needed.

The next step was to bring Graham Loveday to justice.

This case ended up in court.

We felt it was really important to make it clear

that Saga Insurance is not going to tolerate frauds of this type.

Judge found Mr Loveday guilty.

Mr Loveday was sentenced to nine months in prison.

Yeah, I think Mr Loveday's motivation

was undoubtedly a greed to try and get some more money.

We certainly foiled him in this case, yes.

A pair of claimers are shamed on camera.

Our expert didn't accept that there was any possibility whatsoever

that they'd been injured.

In the fight against the growing problem of insurance fraud,

an elite squad have come together to form IFED,

the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.

Insurance fraud isn't a victimless crime.

£50 of each premium you pay each year goes to the fraudsters.

We have been set up to tackle that problem.

This dedicated team works tirelessly to bang up the crooks and conmen

getting rich off other people's money.

Police! Get back!

It is our intention to create a climate of fear for the fraudster.

There's every chance an IFED detective may come knocking

to arrest them for committing an insurance fraud.

Police! Don't move! Stay where you are!

By April 2012, after only six months of operating,

they had already busted 80 fraudsters,

adding up to £12 million of fraud under investigation.

These people are criminals. These are nasty people.

They don't go out to work on a Monday morning like most people do.

Their work is submitting insurance fraud claims.

Today the IFED team, led by DS Mark Forster, has come to raid the home

of a suspect wanted for questioning about car insurance fraud.

This particular individual accepted numerous motor insurance policies.

We think some are in the region - just this one company -

in the region of 60 or 70 motor insurance policies.

The insurer puts the loss at somewhere in the region of £50,000.

The large number of motor insurance policies belonging to the suspect

has led IFED to believe this indicates fraudulent activity.

They want to arrest the suspect

and question him in detail about what's going on.

They're not expecting the inhabitants of the house to be co-operative

and are ready to break their way in if needed.

Open up, it's the police!

Open the door in three seconds.

Police, get back! Police!

Stay where you are!

We've got a warrant. Do you want to get yourself up, darling?

Are you decent at the moment under there?

The first person they find is the mother of the suspect.

She's lying in bed, she's just getting up now.

We're speaking to her to try and find out where her son is.

We'll crack on with the search now.

We've got a warrant to execute a search at this premises

and that's been authorised by the City of London Magistrates Court.

It's in relation to fraud-related offences concerning your son.

He lives... I kicked him out, actually.

-Do you know the address where he's staying?

-No, I don't.

Do you have a contact number for him? That would be a good starter for 10.

While Mark questions the suspect's mother in the lounge,

the team start searching the rest of the house.

The hunt is on for documentary evidence linking the suspect

to the fraud, so the case stands up in court.

Unconvinced that the suspect has actually moved out,

they focus on an upstairs room that might be his bedroom.

But the first thing they find

could be proof of an altogether different sort of crime -

illegal drugs.

Cannabis in which bedroom?

There's two bags there.

These are all empty bags,

with bits and remnants in.

There's an amount of cannabis upstairs in that bedroom

and there's a small amount down here as well.

So we're still going to be seizing that

and speaking to them more about ownership and possession of that.

The search continues.

The next thing they discover is a hidden safe,

concealed behind a fireplace.

Did you last access this safe?

Erm...

Whose safe is it?

The key's been left in the door,

so it's a simple job to open it up.

Could this be where the evidence they need is stashed?

I'm arresting you

on suspicion of possessing a controlled drug, cannabis.

Some chancers take advantage of genuine collisions

to cheat their way to money they don't deserve.

But insurers and transport companies are fighting back

using every hi tech tool at their disposal.

CCTV is one of them.

From time to time, buses are involved in minor incidents.

Huyton bus station was the scene of one such incident.

Valda Grant handled the case.

It was a number 15 bus

travelling into Huyton bus station in the Northwest.

The bus was going slowly into the bus station

and there were some railings on his left-hand side

and he caught the railings with the bus

as he was pulling into the bus station.

Not long after, the bus company heard from two of the passengers

who had been on board at the time.

These were two 17-year-old passengers on the bus

and they both claimed they'd got whiplash injuries,

two with whiplash injury, one said she just had shoulder injury,

because she banged her shoulder against the window.

This was an unexpected outcome

which didn't tally with the slow speed of the impact.

The bus company wasted no time in checking the on-board CCTV

to see if the footage supported the claims.

The women can clearly be seen on the bus,

but at no point do they seem to sustain any injury from a collision.

In fact, the incident is so low-impact

the passengers aren't even seen moving.

When the women leave the bus, they even appear to be smiling.

When we got our own medical expert, we sent him the CCTV,

plus the claimants' witness statements

where they explain what happened in the accident

and how they were injured. Our expert didn't accept

that there was any possibility whatsoever that they'd been injured.

The civil claim proceeded to court

and the bus company used the footage to make their case.

Luckily, justice prevailed.

The court dismissed the claim and the claimants didn't receive any damages.

Without CCTV cameras, it could have been a very different result

and the two women might have got away with their false claim.

It is a sad state of affairs that you need the CCTV,

but it would be sadder if we didn't have them,

because we would not be able to fight these claims.

When it comes to trying their luck with bus companies,

some claimers are even more shameless than the previous pair.

At least they were on the bus in question.

The next story concerns a would-be fraudster

who attempted to claim for injuries she couldn't possibly have suffered.

Jonathan Crookes, the manager of Transcare Law,

works for the bus company involved and investigated the case.

Anneesa Naser was in Queen Street Bus Station in Liverpool.

It's a busy station

and one of the buses was hit at low speed by another bus.

Not long afterwards, the company was contacted by Anneesa Naser.

When she presented a claim for personal injury

on the basis that she had been an occupant of the bus when it was hit.

She claimed that she was jolted

and that she suffered whiplash-type injuries to her neck.

The case was passed on to one of the bus company's own claims handlers.

Our claims handler will have checked the CCTV footage

from inside of the bus

to make sure that Anneesa Naser was indeed on the bus when it was hit.

What they saw blew her claim out of the water.

Somewhat surprisingly and shockingly,

found that, no, she was not on that bus.

In fact, the camera showed her standing in the bus station

watching what was happening.

Watching what was happening,

and clearly coming up with a scheme to scam money from the bus company.

The pictures show her stood outside the bus, watching the impact,

and then getting on the bus that was hit

after the collision had happened.

The CCTV pictures were more than enough evidence

for the bus company to reject her claim.

But they didn't stop there.

Also what she didn't realise

was that she wasn't in a no-lose situation,

because once we rejected her claim for compensation,

we were determined not to let matters lie there

and that we would try and, as a deterrence for other people,

take her to court.

It was impossible to argue with the evidence from the CCTV camera

and Anneesa Naser was found guilty.

The sentence for Miss Naser

was a four-month suspended prison sentence,

180 hours' community service

and she had to pay the prosecution legal costs as well.

But perhaps she's paid an even greater cost

than the sentence itself.

She's got a criminal record now,

a lot of doors are now shut to her in terms of future employment,

cases for mortgages etc, etc.

People just seem to think

that they can take an opportunistic pop at people like us

and they live to regret it.

Technology is a key weapon in the fight against insurance fraud.

Our next would-be swindler

was caught out when she failed to cover her tracks

and left an electronic footprint leading to her downfall.

In 2011, Jodie Jackman was one of the drivers

in a serious car accident.

It involved two motors and a total of seven people,

including the other driver, Katie Ashcroft.

Jodie reported the accident to her insurer and accepted liability.

Claire Laver is a lawyer who worked on the case for the insurer.

Seven claims for personal injury

and other vehicle-related losses were made.

The third-party driver received a sum of money for damage to her vehicle,

as did the policyholder,

and in total that was around about £11,000.

This pay-out covered the damage to both cars

and the personal injury claims for all seven people involved.

That appeared to be that.

Until, due to an unrelated matter,

Jodie was suspended from her admin job,

a routine trawl through her work e-mail account by her employers

revealed a surprising e-mail exchange.

Where they had suggested

getting involved in fabricating an accident

and making a fraudulent claim.

Swiftcover's chief claims officer Robin Reames

was passed the full details of the incriminating exchange.

One e-mail from Katie to Jodie reads...

Jodie replies...

Katie reassures her...

It was very clear from the e-mails

that this was a deliberate attempt to defraud an insurer

by creating an accident that didn't take place

and for seven people to make personal injury claims

that they didn't suffer.

Further digging revealed

the motive behind the fraudulent claim was financial.

The two girls were undergoing some financial strain at the time.

One of them had a loan with a loan shark

and another one had some £5,000 worth of debt.

They were desperately in need of the £11,000 pay-out from the insurer.

It turned out they had maximised their money

by persuading five other people to pretend they were passengers

and put in fake injury claims.

All seven were taken to court.

The result of the court case

was that seven pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud

and of those, three received a 12-week custodial sentence,

suspended for one year,

and the other four received a six-month community order.

This seemed to be an opportunity for them to make some quick cash.

The result is, it didn't work out that way.

They got caught, they lost their jobs,

they have a criminal record

and it sends a very clear message to fraudsters out there

that we will find them

and we will do all we can to protect innocent law-abiding policyholders.

But the story didn't end there.

The insurance company decided to pursue the women

for the money they cheated out of them.

They will have to pay back

the £11,000 that was paid them by Swiftcover in the end anyway.

So, it was a completely pointless exercise

which has left them much worse off than they'd intended.

The Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, IFED,

has come to arrest a suspect

they believe is involved in car insurance fraud.

He's nowhere to be seen.

But they've chanced upon a hidden safe,

which they're hoping will contain some of the evidence they need to make the case stand up.

Did you last access this safe?

As they go through the contents,

they find an array of chequebooks and documents

which they bag up for further investigation.

This is a security measure

to make sure that, should they be subject to a burglary,

that nobody gets all their banking details.

All their chequebooks, credit cards, passports, etc.

Quite ironic, really!

But there's still no sign of the suspect.

IFED persuaded the mother to hand over a contact number for her son,

but they've had no luck with that either.

It's going straight to voice mail. We've left a number of voicemails

asking him to get in touch with us, to basically get himself here.

Their persistence pays off and he eventually rings back.

Where are you?

Sheffield? What are you doing up there?

What vehicle are you driving, how are you going to get here?

IFED has done their homework on the suspect.

When they eventually make contact,

they deliberately reveal some of the information they have, so he knows they're onto him.

I know which vehicles that you've got access to,

I just want to know which vehicle you're going to come in.

Meanwhile, the family guard dog seems to be having an off-day.

So you're going to be here in an hour?

I'm trusting you now to turn up here within the hour.

Lovely, see you then.

Usually we find that that's enough to draw them back to home,

as it were, especially when his mum's here on her own.

Although the suspect has promised to return home,

there's still no sign of him after 45 minutes.

The IFED team is starting to lose patience.

Suddenly, another call comes in, but it's not from the suspect.

It's from a man who says he's his lawyer.

I'm going to put the phone down in a minute, sir.

The lawyer explains that

the suspect won't be coming to the house as promised.

The IFED team think they smell a rat.

If he's a professional solicitor... He's laughing down the phone to me!

That's a nice distraction for us. Where were we?

Their search is turning up an ever-increasing quantity of drugs.

While we're sitting here,

there's quite a strong waft of cannabis

coming from just behind where my colleague is sat.

So that's the third and fourth small quantity of cannabis

we've found in the house.

In three or four different rooms.

With drugs uncovered in several locations around the property,

it's important IFED investigates the illegal substances thoroughly.

The mother is the only person in the house.

Mark takes a decision to arrest her in connection with the drugs.

She's the only one on the premises and there's drugs all over it. So she can come in.

I'm arresting you

on suspicion of possessing a controlled drug, cannabis,

-and on suspicion of conspiring to defraud.

-What, tiny amounts?

-The cannabis that's been found in this house.

-Right, a joint?

-There's been cannabis found in this house.

-Yeah, a joint?

It's an offence.

Just then, the suspect calls again.

Is that you?

I've had a few phone calls from... Mohammed.

He tells me you want to turn up at the police station and not come here.

You've got 15 minutes to get here, so you've run out of time.

They're arresting me!

Why am I arresting her?

For cannabis possession and conspiracy to defraud.

Your timing couldn't be more impeccable.

She's been arrested and she's going to (BLEEP) police station.

Are you coming to the home or to (BLEEP) police station?

There's scales, there's grinders used for grinding down cannabis resin, and bits and pieces.

Scales for weighing the drugs out.

Suddenly, there's a commotion at the door as someone tries to enter.

All right, mate. Hang on. Who's that?

Come on, fella.

It's her son, but unfortunately not the son IFED is after.

What can I do, I've just woke up!

Get that out of here.

Although they didn't get their hands on the suspect,

IFED has found significant amounts of potential evidence

to help with their case. It's been a successful raid,

Mark is confident they will eventually get their man.

He is a very well-known person

and he will come sooner or later to our attention,

or to the police's attention.

He'll get arrested sooner rather than later

if he fails to give himself up today.

So, we will catch up with him eventually.

It would have been nice to have got him today,

but, like I say, we've secured all the evidence from the house

so we're not going to lose anything in relation to our investigation.

The IFED team are a patient bunch and they eventually got their man.

He was arrested and charged with four counts of fraud by false representation,

and possession of the Class B drugs.

He was given a 15 month jail term, suspended for two years,

and a 12 month supervision order.