Episode 1 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 phantom pets.

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...

The subject is out of the vehicle.

..sophisticated data analysis techniques.

And highly skilled dedicated police units...

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

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

All those conmen, scammers and cheats on the fiddle,

now they're caught in the act

and Claimed and Shamed.

Today, IFED is raiding the home of a suspected insurance cheat.

-The officers have found a hand gun.

-Quite possibly everything in this house

has been purchased from the proceeds of crime.

An aircraft manufacturing giant fights a fraudster.

I've seen an awful lot of these over the years,

but it was still pretty staggering to watch.

And a smashed-up sports car is at the centre of a whodunit mystery.

He was saying the rear end was completely smashed up.

She said there was minimal damage to the rear of the car.

Photocopying can be pretty dull.

Sheet after sheet after sheet.

Followed by collating and stapling ad infinitum.

Imagine doing it all day.

That's what Adam Roberts used to do for a commercial airline manufacturer.

His career wasn't always this humdrum.

Up until October 2007,

he used to make these.

Some of the biggest planes in the world.

Adam Roberts was working as an apprentice aircraft electrician.

He was working in an aircraft factory

helping to apply parts to aircraft wings.

He could have expected to earn anywhere between 30,000, going up to 50,000 a year

depending on where he was working and his experience.

Everything changed for Adam in 2007

whilst working on one of the largest aircraft in the world.

The accident was on 15 October 2007.

And what he said was that he slipped on debris while he was working.

The injury was a wrenching injury to the back,

a soft tissue injury which is alleged to have caused some sort of spinal problems.

His injuries worsened over time,

badly affecting his everyday life.

Before the accident, he'd liked to go horse-riding, playing golf,

cycling and other such activities.

But as a result of this accident and his supposed disability,

he could no longer do that.

He said that he had to use a crutch all the time and often two crutches.

Due to his injuries, Adam was no longer capable of doing his job

as an aircraft electrician.

He tried it but said he found it too physically demanding.

He was saying that he was at a big disadvantage in the labour market because he was disabled

and it made a difference to his ability to work in the future.

It imperilled his ability to work in the future.

Roberts, now stuck in an admin role,

decided to make a claim against his employer.

He was claiming for past care afforded by his family,

for unspecified aids and equipment,

and he was also claiming for future loss of earnings,

future care and future equipment, plus a claim for future accommodation costs.

My assessment of the overall value of the claim,

including legal costs, was £670,000.

It was a massive claim.

To see it through, Roberts would need to provide medical evidence of his disability.

When he issued his legal proceedings,

he supported his proceedings with two medical reports,

one from a consultant orthopaedic surgeon,

and one from a consultant psychiatrist.

And both of those doctors concluded that he had suffered injury in this accident

and that that injury was responsible for his continuing disability.

He looked to have a solid case.

Just one more thing.

The insurers' medical examination.

When I got the papers, I went through them in detail.

There were a couple of things about the claim

that raised my suspicions.

There was no hard clinical pathology

that our medical experts could find to justify the complaints.

That was part of the issue for us in looking at this case very hard.

There was a suggestion when he'd been examined in hospital

that a test which is used to detect exaggeration

had resulted in some not entirely straightforward responses.

Nothing conclusive had come from the medical reports.

And with suspicions raised, the insurer set out to discover

the real physical state of Adam Roberts.

They hired a private investigator.

He was put under surveillance for a period of three days in June 2011.

From our point of view, the surveillance on the 17th June was the crucial surveillance.

What it showed Mr Roberts doing was,

after having come home from work on the Friday afternoon, it was Friday afternoon,

he then drove to a house which we now know to be a house which his mother had just bought.

In accordance with his claim,

we should expect to see a badly disabled Adam Roberts using crutches

and only capable of walking short distances at a time.

Here he comes now.

I've seen an awful lot of these over the years,

but it was still pretty staggering to watch!

An industrious Roberts emerges from the house

and proceeds to dump the contents of a gutted bathroom into a skip.

Firstly he was shown putting some large pieces of board into the skip.

Not just putting them in, but ramming them in, breaking them on occasion

and sometimes bashing them on the side of the skip.

Then, I think, as I recall it,

he and his mother brought out a bath between them.

But he was the one who picked it up and up-ended it into the skip.

He brought out a lavatory cistern.

There was a washbasin.

There was a fire surround that he spent quite a lot of time

bashing around and trying to get into the skip.

There were bags of rubble, and you could see from the way he was carrying them

that they weren't lightweight bags of rubble, they were builders' sacks

and they were heavy. He was empting those into the skip, with dust everywhere.

There were a number of items which he was trying to break up

and bashing against the side of the skip.

And it culminated, as I recall, with Mr Roberts actually jumping into the skip

and actually tamping stuff down with his feet, jumping up and down on stuff a little bit

and generally trying to settle stuff down the skip by being in it!

And that's the point at which I just thought, "Oh, dear!"

Roberts had tried to get a massive payout from the insurers.

They weren't happy. They decided to take it to court.

The reason for doing that was that we and the insurers

felt it was necessary to send a message to people

that they just can't do this and expect to get away with it.

The judges said they felt he was somebody who was prepared to lie to achieve his aims.

Adam Roberts was found guilty of contempt of court.

He was sentenced to six months in jail.

It seems such a shame.

He'd qualified as an aircraft electrician

and to lose all that for the sake of exaggerating his symptoms

is inexplicable to me, really. I don't understand why he did it.

I don't think insurance fraud is ever worth the risk. It is fraud.

People have kidded themselves, I think, into thinking they won't be found out.

They will get found out, and when they get found out,

as Adam Roberts' case shows, the consequences are very, very serious indeed.

You can end up ruining your life. And for what?

An injured man makes a £17,000 claim.

He'd stepped out of the car

and put his foot onto a manhole cover

and the manhole cover collapsed.

And a fast car takes a whack.

In most cases, they normally take a hammer to the back of it.

Insurance fraud is on the rise.

And if you have insurance of any kind, you're footing the bill.

But the fraudsters have an ominous enemy.

IFED is a 35-strong unit

that works tirelessly to hunt down

and prosecute insurance fraudsters

wherever they may be throughout England and Wales.

Through a combination of investigation, industry connections

and surprise,

they've made over 300 arrests

and stopped millions of pounds from going to the criminals.

Money which ultimately goes back in our pockets.

If you're thinking of committing insurance fraud,

I'd say to you, "Think again."

Because there's every chance that IFED could coming knocking on your front door.

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

It's 7.35am.

In an attempt to stop the activities of a suspected fraud gang,

the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department

are simultaneously executing raids at multiple addresses.

IFED's Declan Malone and Simon Styles

are heading to the address of the suspected ringleaders.

This morning, we're off to the home address

of the main suspect

in a fake claims management company

where he's setting up fake policies online

and making claims on accidents that have never occurred

and it's believed that the perpetrators have managed to achieve

something like a quarter of a million pounds

from their claims so far.

The guy should be at his home address with his wife, who's also going to be arrested.

It's one of six search warrants that have been issued simultaneously.

Alex, hi.

Yeah, we're just plotting up now. We'll be good to go in about five.

Because it's the house of the suspected ringleaders,

as well as making arrests, they expect to find potential evidence

of the gang's activities.

It could be a big search.

Declan and Simon are joined by representatives from the Ministry of Justice,

local police and the head IFED, DCI David Wood.

MAN SHOUTS

Quiet, please!

Quiet, please!

It's only 7.40am

but the neighbours are out and about

and agitated by the presence of the raid team.

DCI David Wood steps in to stop the situation escalating.

MAN CONTINUES TO SHOUT

Would you like to come down, please? It's the police.

Thank you.

Hiya.

I'm Declan Malone from the police. Can I speak to Mum or Dad?

We need to come and speak to them. It's OK. Can I come in, please?

We need to come in and get people out of the street

so they don't get into trouble.

Hello? Police!

Hello? Hello? Police.

IFED finds both suspects in the house.

One of them is a familiar face.

The individual arrested today,

we believe is one of the main individuals involved

in this particular insurance scam.

He's been convicted before of a like-minded crime.

I'm arresting you on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud

and money laundering.

Both suspects are taken to a local police station for questioning.

That's half the job done at this location.

We're taking away the main suspect and his wife.

He's been arrested for conspiracy to defraud and for money laundering.

She's just been arrested for conspiracy to defraud.

IFED can now begin a systematic search for potential evidence.

It's a three-storey town house. It could be a big job.

It's important we do everything and don't leave any stone unturned.

We want to do the search properly.

That's why we've called in the experts who are fully trained and qualified

in current search techniques. Even better than us!

The town house is new and fairly high spec.

Its quality raises the suspicions of IFED's financial investigator, Simon Styles.

From the enquiries that I've made,

I can see no trace of any member of the family actually working.

I've just to check on whether they're in receipt of any benefits.

But this house, looking round it,

there's a lot of nice stuff - clothes, material goods -

and it's quite possible everything in this house has been purchased from the proceeds of crime.

Head of IFED, DCI David Wood,

has received news from the other location of today's raid.

I've just received some breaking news from one of the addresses.

The officers have found a hand gun.

They're not sure exactly what it is,

-so they've called out the local police

-BLEEP

-to the firearms scene

to come and make it safe and identify exactly what the weapon is.

IFED makes big discoveries

in a small room.

In the wrong hands, deadly.

It's upsetting and annoying to see,

especially with being so close to where the children were, next to their bedroom.

This is a street in Shrewsbury.

It looks fairly innocuous.

Most people would feel safe walking down it.

But watch your step.

In 2012, local man Peter Finney was badly injured here.

The culprit...

a manhole cover.

Peter Finney was a passenger in a car

and he stepped out of the car outside the Lion Hotel in Shrewsbury.

He put his foot onto a manhole cover and the manhole cover collapsed

and he injured his leg.

The manhole was on private land.

Its upkeep was the responsibility of a hotel.

The hotel's insurer would have to bear the brunt of Peter Finney's claim.

They had a look at the details.

He had soft tissue injuries to his leg.

It's something which is not visible

so it is soft tissue. Whiplash is the most obvious example that we get.

But it's anything which is not easy to detect or easy to see.

His injuries were severe enough to force him off work.

Loss of earnings and mounting medical bills led Finney to seek compensation totalling £17,000.

For a claim of this size, the insurer needed to know more about the accident.

We asked him to give us some more information

and eventually he provided a photograph of the manhole cover.

This is what a well-maintained manhole cover looks like.

The one Peter Finney fell down

looked like...this.

It seemed as though the hotel had been negligent

with the upkeep of the manhole.

With cast-iron evidence like this,

Finney could look forward to getting his payout.

But not yet.

Peter Finney's claim had a few irregularities.

Chasing further information,

the insurer decided to visit the scene of the incident,

the hotel in Shrewsbury.

Since Peter Finney's alleged accident,

the hotel had replaced the manhole cover with a new one.

Although the manhole cover at the hotel was intact,

they actually thought they'd replace it, just to be on the safe side.

But luckily for the insurer, the manager had kept the old one.

And when they saw it, it turned Peter Finney's claim into a criminal investigation.

The manhole cover that's in the photo is a completely different construction.

It's quite obvious to anybody.

You wouldn't need forensic examination to see that these were different manhole covers.

We referred him straight to the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.

Finney was in big trouble.

Since its inception, IFED's team of over 30 specialist detectives

have made over 300 arrests.

Peter Finney was in their sights.

Detectives travelled to Shrewsbury and arrested Mr Finney

and interviewed him at the local police station.

Mr Finney stuck to his original story

and maintained that the injury had been suffered

due to stepping on the defective - as he called it - manhole cover.

Faced with a stubborn suspect,

IFED decided to take the case to court,

causing Peter Finney to crack.

On 31 January 2013,

Mr Finney attended Shrewsbury Magistrates Court

and entered a plea of guilty

to the charge of fraud by false representation.

Peter Finney was sentenced to 18 weeks imprisonment, suspended for 12 months,

and ordered to do community service.

It would have impacted on the hotel

because there they are running their business

when somebody chooses them to be the victim of a fictitious claim.

Ultimately it will impact on the premium that they'd have to pay

had this person been successful in getting away with their scam.

Further breaking news. At another address, we've uncovered

a CS spray canister.

Jeremy Clarkson doesn't care for them, but many do.

Porsche cars have always been associated with speed and style.

And most people would agree they're not cheap.

So, when one takes a shunt,

it generally results in a big insurance claim.

The black car in this tunnel is a Porsche.

Right behind the Porsche is a van

belonging to Doncaster County Council.

The driver of the Porsche, Mark Smith, is pretty annoyed right now

as the white council van has just smashed into the back of him.

Luckily, the road layout meant the crash wasn't at high speed,

so no-one was seriously injured.

At the time of the accident, according to the report,

the van wasn't going more than 30 miles an hour. Nor was Mark Smith.

Even at that speed, fixing a Porsche doesn't come cheap.

The repair costs came to £27,000.

Mark Smith also filed a claim for whiplash

and for the cost of a hire car until his was fixed.

All in, the insurers of the council van were potentially facing a £100,000 claim.

He would have got a high-end vehicle

because of the Porsche he was driving, so he'd get like for like.

You're looking at a lot of money each day. It soon starts adding up.

Before they could pay out on the personal injury claim and hire charges,

the insurers needed to make sure all of the claim's paperwork was in order.

That's when they spotted a problem.

They became suspicious when they obtained a statement from the van driver.

When her statement came in,

there were ambiguities between what she was saying and what Mark Smith was alleging.

He was saying the rear end was completely smashed up.

She said there was minimal damage to the rear of the car.

It was a big difference in opinion.

Did the Porsche suffer massive rear-end damage

or just a small dent?

The insurance company sent out a specialist examiner

to look at the vehicle and find out whose statement was more accurate.

When the examination took place, photographs were taken.

The rear end of this vehicle was completely smashed up.

Pictures can prove that.

The Porsche looked to have been severely damaged,

which backed up owner Mark Smith's version of events.

But before they paid out, there was one last question.

Why did the driver of the council van say that the Porsche drove off

with a small dent in its rear?

The insurers had one last thing to look at.

The tunnel has got CCTV both at the beginning and at the end of the tunnel.

When they played the CCTV footage,

this is what they saw.

What happened was Mark Smith came into the tunnel on the outside lane

which was completely clear, no traffic in front of him whatsoever.

The van was driving on the nearside lane.

He suddenly pulls in in front of the van and then slams on his brakes

and does an emergency stop, causing the van to then rear shunt him.

It looked like what's known in the business as a "slam on".

A simple form of crash for cash.

But Smith claimed to have good reason for his drastic manoeuvre.

He was stating that he'd pulled into the nearside lane

and had to do an emergency stop because the vehicles in front of him were braking.

When you look at the CCTV, they weren't braking.

You can see a slight brake on the vehicle in front of him,

but not enough to do an emergency stop.

Mark Smith's case was falling apart.

And if DC Kate Sibley needed one further piece of evidence against his claim,

she had it.

Remember that photo of his Porsche

with the rear end smashed up?

That's what he was stating happened in the tunnel.

But it can be physically seen, him coming out of the tunnel

and the spoiler is still totally intact. Very little rear-end damage

compared to what was in the photographs.

The driver of the council van had said all along

that the Porsche had driven away with a minor dent to its rear,

and she was right.

In order to maximise his claim,

Mark Smith had further damaged his vehicle after the accident.

In most cases, they normally take a hammer to the back of it,

the rear end of it, and smash it up like that.

In this case, I don't know how he did it. He never stated that.

Mark Smith pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud by false representation.

He was given a suspended six-month jail term

and ordered to complete 140 hours of unpaid community work.

Crash for cash is a big business at the moment.

The implications can be quite serious

and have been, in certain circumstances.

Worst-case scenario, somebody dies.

I think they've got away with it for too long,

but hopefully, not any more.

Today, IFED is executing multiple simultaneous raids.

Come down, please. It's the police.

It has warrants for six members

of a suspected fraudulent accident management gang.

Just received some breaking news from one of the addresses. The officers have found a hand gun.

Here at the address of the man thought to be the ringleader,

the team has made two arrests

and has begun an extensive search of this three-storey townhouse.

IFED's financial investigator, Simon Styles,

is on the first floor of the house.

His attention has been drawn to a box room.

This is of interest. It's a ceremonial sword.

In the wrong hands, deadly.

It's upsetting and annoying, especially when it's so close to the children's bedrooms.

Having been drawn to the room,

IFED conducts a thorough search of its contents.

This is the hub of the enterprise we're talking about, the insurance scam. This may be where it happened.

It turns out the room is crammed with documents

relating to vehicle insurance policies.

What I note here is the vehicle registration number.

This relates to a vehicle

that is currently sat on the driveway of this premises,

that I know from my investigation has been used, or the registration number has been used,

in contrived accidents.

The car is meticulously searched for further evidence.

We noticed on the front passenger seat there was some documentation.

Even looking through the window, we noticed it was in relation to a road traffic accident

which we're interested in, in connection with an enquiry.

So those bits of paper have been seized while we search the vehicle

and they are entered into the evidence chain.

From its research, IFED knows a bit about the car's history.

According to insurance records,

the car has been involved in several bumps and scrapes.

Each time, the owners received hundreds or thousands of pounds for the claim.

The car is, at most, worth a couple of thousand pounds.

The children's bedrooms also have to be searched.

It's such a shame when you're turning someone's bedroom upside-down, especially a girl's.

But unfortunately, people do hide things in strange places

and what I tend to do is be as sensitive as possible

and look at things, and if I don't need them, I put them back

exactly where I found it

so there's no disruption to their lives.

We're looking at sim cards and credit cards, things like that,

that can be stuck underneath.

Things that you wouldn't, if you open a drawer, you wouldn't normally see.

Simon has found something of interest in a school satchel.

This book, I've opened the first page,

it's got a line here, "cheap quotes online".

And a phone number.

As we're here for insurance scams,

it may be something that later may well incriminate that individual.

Simon heads to the box room

and removes what may be the heart of the operation.

This, I believe, is a storage unit

that any history of any of the contrived accidents, any of the claims,

any of the setting up of the claims management companies -

there have been a number of claims management companies that have been set up -

so anything that has been used in the contrived accidents maybe well be stored here.

So this may well hold the key, really, to what we're all about.

Today, DC Declan Malone is the exhibits officer.

Anything taken as potential evidence has to pass under his nose.

So far, we've received vehicle documentation, log books,

we've received computers, and storage data devices have been seized.

So we're quite happy with what we've got so far.

Declan has found some items of interest on the top floor of the house.

He's got a contingency plan. He's got two driving licences in his own name.

Current ones.

And also he's done the same with passports.

He's got two of them, both British passports,

in his own name with the correct details.

Holding two passports from one country is highly suspicious

and often indicative of criminal activity.

So Declan is bagging them up.

Every room of the suspected ringleader's house has been searched.

IFED has found a boot-load of potential evidence.

This part of the multiple raid is done.

And there's been a good result at the other raid location.

Further breaking news.

At another address, we've uncovered a CS spray canister.

So a person has been further arrested for possession of that article.

And at a separate address,

they've found a selection of baseball bats and balaclavas

which we obviously suspect to be gang-related paraphernalia.

So again, they'll be in the evidence chain

and questions will be asked of the suspects when they're interviewed later today.

A good day at the office for DCI Wood and his fraud-busting team.

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