Episode 3 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...

That's the subject out 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, the Met Traffic Unit collar some suspected fraudsters

on an early-morning raid...

-Do you work here?

-I don't work here.

-You seem quite at home, with your coat off.

..a lost dog at the centre of a pet insurance claim

makes a remarkable comeback...

Another local vet has just contacted me

for the history of that dog that supposedly was washed off the cliff

because it's just been registered with them.

..and a crash-for-cash gang is caught out

trying to tangle with a truck.

Experience tells you when you're viewing footage

that some things are not quite right.

This busy station is in Middlesbrough, in North East England.

Thousands of passengers pass through its bustling foyer every day.

In the summer of 2011, it was the scene of a dangerous accident

that led to a large insurance claim.

Here's the man in question,

moments before he fell and suffered serious injury.

Lee Ingram, from First Group's Transportation Claims Division, worked on the case.

He's alleging that as he is walking across the foyer,

he has tripped in a gap,

which he is describing as a defect on the floor,

fallen over and injured himself.

The gentleman is alleging that, from this trip,

he sustained injuries to his head, causing an open head wound.

Subsequently, he's then alleging that he has sustained dizzy spells

and succumbed to headaches.

Some two months after the incident,

he's still got headaches and suffering from dizziness.

His on-going health problems indicated that this had been no minor accident.

He's describing a traumatic head injury.

Head injuries are always something we would be concerned about.

Often, concussion is not immediately apparent

to the person who sustained the concussion.

Head injuries can also lead to cognitive issues

which will impair function,

possible speech issues

and maybe loss of short-term or long-term memory,

so they're always something we will investigate seriously.

It was a potentially life-changing injury,

but when Transportation Claims went to call up the accident report,

they found that there wasn't one.

The gentleman concerned alleges that he didn't report this particular incident to anyone

because the ticket office was closed

and there was no-one around for him to report to.

It was clear that the case needed further investigation.

Luckily, the station is covered by CCTV

and the cameras had captured everything from that evening.

Immediately before the accident, the man is seen to cross the foyer.

He then falls over in a dramatic manner.

When you see what has transpired in this particular footage,

it makes you suddenly start thinking, "This is a bit strange!"

What they saw on camera made Lee and his team suspicious.

You'd expect in this type of fall for someone to fall forward quite quickly.

The first reaction when you take a fall like that

is to put your arms out to break your fall.

We don't see that in this situation.

Instead, the footage raises serious questions.

We see the chap immediately going to hold his head before he hits the fall,

suggesting that he may well be trying to break his fall because he knew it was coming.

What's more, the footage shows numerous other passengers

encountering no difficulty with the alleged defect in the floor tiling.

We see round about 15 people walking over, around and across,

some people even standing in the actual area,

where this person is alleging he's tripped.

The sheer number that walk over it would suggest it wasn't the issue

that the claimant is making it out to be.

And the discrepancies didn't stop there.

The claimant alleged that he didn't report the incident

because there were no station staff around, but this was disproved.

When you look at the footage, you will see a number of people wearing high-vis jackets,

which would've been station employees that he could've reported this fall to.

But that's not all that's revealed by the footage.

Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence was right at the beginning of the tape.

A little girl is seen scooting around the foyer.

At one stage, she runs over the tile, dislodging one of the tiles.

She stops a little bit further on,

turns around and replaces the tile where it's come from,

obviously showing that there is a loose tile in the foyer.

Significantly, this all happens within view of the claimant.

Preceding the fall, you will see the gentleman walk towards the defect,

take a deliberate look at it,

walk on past it, lengthening his stride

so he can actually step over the area in question.

He then walks towards the foyer, he turns round at the stairs, walks back towards the area,

and you can visibly see him deviate to the left

so that he can place his right foot deliberately into the area concerned.

He does stumble forward

as if his legs have been taken away from him.

I think he's given a great performance.

He possibly could've won awards for that.

Transportation Claims felt they had all the evidence they needed

to strike out the claimant's demand for compensation.

They sent the CCTV to the claimant's solicitors

and waited for a response.

Two years on, we've still not had a response from them

as to whether they're withdrawing their claim. We'll take it as red that they are.

For him to think he can get away with this sort of thing is quite naive

and bordering on ridiculous!

A dodgy vet is caught cashing in on treatments for pets that never existed.

The only element of truth

was the fact that the vet who was submitting the invoices for this expensive treatment

was a real vet.

A Met Traffic Unit raid on an accident management company

turns up a truckload of potential evidence.

There are multiple registration documents, hundreds of insurance claim forms,

the usual mobile phones that he used in the claims. Basically, it's a gold mine.

This is the home of the Met Traffic Unit.

Set up in 2010,

this specialist department is dedicated to reducing the number of traffic-related deaths,

injuries and crimes on the streets of the capital.

We search for people who are wanted for serious offences.

My team have made 300 arrests in the last two-and-a-half years,

which is around about 50 operations.

Every one of those operations will have resulted in a prosecution.

Their aim is to make our roads as safe as possible.

Criminals gangs operating insurance scams

are responsible for the rise of a terrifying new danger on our roads -

crash for cash.

DI Dave Hindmarsh of the Met Traffic Unit

is once again spearheading the initiative to stop the gangs in their tracks.

You have the most serious types of crash for cash,

which is the induced collision,

and this is primarily where criminal gang members

go out onto the roads with two cars.

They drive in tandem, looking for their victim.

They'll position themselves in front

and then the decoy car, which will be the lead car,

will brake hard.

That gives the middle car, the one that they want to be damaged,

a reason to brake,

catch their victim out and they'll run into the back.

That is a typical crash-for-cash scenario.

The insurance industry have estimated that it cost them

somewhere in the region of £392 million per year,

but I think it's probably bigger.

It is an extremely dangerous way of earning some money,

because you are putting innocent members of the public at risk.

Cash-for-crash gangs will target commercial vehicles

for the simple reason that they're insured.

They know they're going to be insured.

They don't want to cause a crash with someone who might not be insured.

Because fraudsters go after commercial fleet vehicles,

some insurance companies, like Towergate,

have taken the innovative step of supplying fleet vehicles with forward-facing cameras.

That is one of the cameras we use. As you can see, it's quite small.

We site them behind the rear-view mirror.

But it's not the size that's important.

Towergate introduced them

as a method of determining legal liability following an accident.

We see what the driver sees.

The cameras certainly proved their worth

in the case of a collision on a busy A road in July 2010.

One of their vehicles had hit the car in front.

It sounded like a standard rear-end shunt,

but the footage revealed something more sinister.

They passed it to DI Hindmarsh.

In the footage,

what you see is a blue Mercedes

and a black VW Golf.

The black VW Golf is the decoy car,

the car that's there to give the blue Mercedes a reason to brake.

Effectively, the footage shows the two vehicles

manoeuvring themselves in front of the lorry,

and at the last moment, the black Golf brakes hard,

turns left into a side road,

causing the blue Mercedes to brake and stop,

and the lorry crashes into the back with some significant rear damage.

Experience tells you when viewing footage that some things are not right.

It's quite a large impact.

The people involved in this are almost stunt drivers,

because I've watched that footage several times

and at the last moment, just before impact,

the driver of the Mercedes comes off the brakes

and turns the steering wheel to the left,

therefore he is hit

but he's almost pushed out of the way and round the corner,

rather than being pushed into incoming traffic.

The shocking footage

had actually captured a crash-for-cash gang in action

and the investigation eventually uncovered a huge web of criminality

stretching across the country.

The decoy car, the black Golf that you see in the footage,

the driver came from Luton.

The Mercedes that you see getting damaged,

the owner of that car lives in London.

One of the passengers in that car lived in Manchester.

And the claims management company

that were going to handle some of the aspects of this claim

were in South Yorkshire.

The Met Traffic Unit investigated the main players seen in the footage.

We knew who the owner of the Mercedes was,

and it was a matter of finding out who his associates were.

Ansab Rizwan was the managing director

of an accident management company in Yorkshire,

his brother, Ihtisham Gondal, was a passenger in the Mercedes

and Tariq Mehmood was the driver of the decoy car.

Dave Hindmarsh and his team had enough evidence to launch a full-scale investigation.

It resulted in the accident management company in Yorkshire

being the subject of a search warrant.

We searched the premises and took all the files.

That highlighted a number of other collisions

in London, Manchester

and around the sort of Luton, Bedfordshire area.

The suspects were arrested and the case eventually came to court.

They all pleaded guilty.

Tariq Mehmood was seen as the most serious of the people concerned.

He was the one that had caused the crashes.

He got 12 months imprisonment.

Ansab Rizwan and his brother Ihtisham Gondal

received suspended sentences

and 180 hours unpaid work.

And Nasser Khan, the gentlemen who had allowed his car to be used,

he received a community order as a result.

So people who previously hadn't been in trouble with the police before

have now got criminal records and some have gone to prison.

The sentences reflected the seriousness of the crime.

Cash for crash risks injuring innocent people

in a staged road accident.

It's a very real danger.

In February 2013, a gang was jailed for their role in the tragic death of a young woman,

caught up in a crash-for-cash accident.

The Met Traffic Unit are totally committed to making our roads safe.

If a lot more commercial vehicles, even private cars, were fitted with cameras,

it would be a massive use to ourselves

and the insurance companies.

We think of the UK as a nation of animal lovers,

but unscrupulous fraudsters are exploiting our furry friends, in order to line their pockets.

Disturbing figures from the Association of British Insurers

show pet insurance fraud quadrupled from £420,000 in 2009

to almost £2 million in 2010.

Simon Wheeler is managing director of Agria Pet Insurance.

He reviewed a claim for a pay-out for a missing dog.

It was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. It was merely four years old.

The claimant contacted the company to explain what had happened to the poor pooch.

The policy holder and the dog had been in Cornwall,

near the seaside,

and the dog had been washed out to sea off a rock,

and that was the last the policy holder saw of the dog.

This was obviously traumatic for the owner

because in the claim form she was very upset

and the dog had been washed out to sea in front of her eyes.

Despite the heartbreak of losing the dog,

the policy holder would receive a silver lining in the form of a pay-out,

and promptly sent through the documentation.

The claim form was completed by the policy holder

and the full veterinary section was completed by her local vet.

As part of the claims procedure, Agria contacted the practice associated with the dog

to check the animal was registered with them

and that the vet who signed the form worked there.

The practice instantly said, "Yes, this is one of our patients

"and this vet works at the practice."

That vet at the time who had signed the claim form

was on holiday when we contacted them.

Nothing led us to suggest that there was fraudulent activity, and indeed we settled the claim -

a fairly low value for £300.

But then Agria were contacted by the vet,

who had just returned from her holiday.

She was pretty confident that she hadn't filled out the claim form, hadn't signed the claim form,

because as far as she was concerned, if she couldn't identify the pet and the pet had died,

she wouldn't have signed a certificate to say it had died.

The claim form was faxed to the vet

who confirmed that it wasn't her signature and pointed out another discrepancy.

The practice stamp on the claim form actually wasn't their practice stamp,

so more than likely, the policy holder had a stamp made up

to add that level of authenticity to the claim.

It seemed clear that Agria was dealing with a fraudulent claim.

Although they'd gone to some lengths to create a genuine-looking form,

they had underestimated the insurer's determination to stamp out fraud.

We said to the policy holder, "We believe you're acting fraudulently.

"We've been in contact with the practice and they didn't complete this claim form."

Very shortly afterwards,

we got a cheque in the post from the policy holder for the £300,

a letter of explanation

to say that somebody in the household had completed the form

and submitted it fraudulently.

But the whole shaggy-dog story didn't end there.

Four months later, Agria were contacted again by the dog's vet,

who had uncovered a staggering new development.

She rang up and said, "You're not going to believe this.

"Another local vet has just contacted me

"for the history of that dog that supposedly was washed off the cliff

"because it's just been registered."

It appeared that the dog had never been washed off a rock and drowned.

It was alive and well

and had just registered with a new vet.

It's one thing for owners to attempt to pull the wool over insurer's eyes

but what really gives pause for thought is the behaviour of dishonest vets.

Detective Constable Alex Cooley from IFED,

the City of London's police Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department,

worked on one such case.

His team was alerted to a pet insurance claim

for veterinary work that appeared suspicious.

We first received a referral from one of the insurance companies

who had spotted the discrepancy

between the work being claimed for by the vet

and the fact that that type of work wasn't carried out by that practice.

It didn't add up

and IFED carried out further enquiries.

We identified another insurance company

who had four suspicious claims coming from the same vet.

The man in question was Francisco Cruz,

a vet working at a practice in Norfolk.

We were looking at five claims in total,

involving both cats and dogs

who were alleged to have chewed pieces of plastic,

leading to medical difficulties and requiring expensive surgery.

So, on average, the claims were coming out at about £2,500.

The fact that all five claims

were for a type of surgery that didn't take place at Cruz's workplace seemed suspicious,

but more evidence was needed.

When they looked into the identities of the policy holders,

it seemed that they had the proof that they were after.

The names that he was using

were a hotchpotch of members of his family,

but also his friends and even children of his friends.

We couldn't detect any reason behind that,

other than sort of imaginative laziness.

It turned out that every detail about the claims was false,

even the pets themselves.

The only element of truth was the fact that the vet was a real vet.

So the vet was forging his invoices

in respect of work which was never carried out

and then he was making claims against the policies that he had totally made up,

concerning these fake pets.

Cruz was abusing his position as a vet to pass off fake claims,

but he hadn't covered his tracks

and the IFED team had enough evidence to arrest him.

Cruz's motivation was clearly financial.

In order to pay off certain debts,

he was making a fake claim at a rate of one every year.

In total, he made £10,000 from his offending.

The case eventually reached court and Cruz was found guilty.

He was sentenced to a suspended eight-month jail term, 200 hours community service

and ordered to pay £10,000 compensation.

But perhaps the greatest cost is to Cruz's professional reputation.

Gordon Hockey is Head Of Legal Services

at the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons,

the body that regulates every vet in the UK.

All vets, on becoming members, make a declaration,

in effect, to put the animals and the public first.

Where vets are dishonest, commit insurance fraud,

that's clearly not putting animals first or the public first,

and it is taken seriously by the college.

The vast majority of vets are law-abiding and honest,

so this happens very rarely.

The most severe sanction that the RCVS can impose on a vet

is to take their name off the register, to strike them off the register,

which means that they can't practise and therefore can't earn a living as a veterinary surgeon.

Today, the Met Traffic Unit has assembled for a briefing

about a raid they're about to carry out on an accident management company.

-Basically, Operation

-BLEEP

-is around the active management company.

The Insurance Fraud Bureau have identified several claims

which can be described as suspicious circumstances.

We need to do a bit of investigation into the legitimacy of the claims they seem to be handling.

They've been given a tip-off by the Insurance Fraud Bureau.

Basically, the intention will be to execute a search warrant at the address.

Accident management companies process claims

on behalf of victims of road-traffic accidents.

They organise hire vehicles, refer cases to lawyers

and manage personal injury claims.

Unfortunately, there are examples of accident management companies acting fraudulently

by inventing or inflating claims.

The Met Traffic Unit is planning to execute a search warrant

on the premises of an accident management company

in the hope of collecting evidence to support their case of suspected fraud.

Once they've arrived at the location, they identify the premises

and then move in as quickly as possible

to make sure no-one escapes or tries to hide vital evidence.

All right, mate. Got any ID on you? OK.

The first thing they do is ask everyone for ID.

The officers need to work out who's a client and an employee.

But some of the people in the office appear to be holding back.

I know how old I am. Why don't you know how old you are?

-I'm 32.

-You're sure you're 32?

-You're not going to change it?

-No.

-No? OK.

Others seem to be confused about their role at the company.

-What's your position here?

-It's my brother's company.

-It's your brother's company?

-Yes.

-Do you work here?

-I don't.

-You seem quite at home, with your coat off.

-Huh?

-You seem quite at home.

-I'm looking after it.

-After who?

-My brother's work.

-Oh, so you do work here, then?

-Sometimes I come here.

-That's what I said. I said, "Do you work here?" You said "no".

-I don't work. I sometimes come here.

The Traffic Unit needs to speak to the owner,

but he isn't in the office and has left his brother in charge.

-I class what you've said as working here.

-Sorry?

I class what you've said as you working here.

-No, I -

-You're not just a person off the street, are you?

-No.

-That's the point I'm trying to say.

We like to keep things simple.

-It just takes longer if we don't.

-No problem.

-Super.

Eventually, everyone has been checked and identified

and most are allowed to leave.

The job of collecting evidence can now get under way.

As the team go through the premises, the sheer size of the task becomes apparent.

The office is stuffed full of cupboards and filing cabinets.

One of the officers eventually will be taking the files out

and we'll look at a later stage, when we've got a bit more time to spread it all out.

We can't do it at the scene. It's just totally impractical.

Basically, we're just systematically going through,

bagging up all the property so we don't miss anything,

and for continuity, as well.

It does take a bit of time, but it's something which has got to be done properly.

Seven mobile telephones.

The mobile phones could be an important piece of evidence, for a number of reasons.

You can get lots of details off them.

You can link them into different collisions, different false claims.

You can also get an idea of who's working here

and whose phone it ultimately belongs to.

Once they've been examined, we'll find out exactly what their involvement is.

It may well be quite innocent,

but you don't normally find bags of mobiles phones lying around.

The owner of the company belated arrives at the scene.

The guy sitting behind me, erm, with the baseball cap

is the owner of the premises.

He's heard what's been going on,

because his brother was here when we first entered the premises,

and he's come along to see what's going on

and see us taking away his business.

It's important to follow up all the suspected evidence

and that includes keys to cars being stored or used for hire.

Everything centres around the fact

that some claims for car hires,

er, car-hiring storage, are believed to be fraudulent,

so any of the vehicles are probably part of that, as well.

They're part of the overall potentially criminal enterprise that we're looking at.

30 keys here. There could be more.

So far, DC Tony Recchia is pleased with how well the raid is going.

We've found the things that we were looking for.

There are multiple registration documents,

hundreds and hundreds of insurance claim forms,

the usual mobile phones that he used in the claims.

Basically, it's a gold mine.

DI Dave Hindmarsh has arrived at the location

to oversee proceedings.

The team have come down to execute a search warrant

and, as a result,

there's been a large amount of property seized from the premises.

The intention is, a lorry will arrive

and we will load all of the seized property onto the lorry

and in our leisure, we will sift through it

to see which bits are evidence and which bits are not.

The team isn't taking any chances and has seized a huge volume of potential evidence,

leaving the office practically bare.

It's been several months in the planning to get to the stage that we are now,

meticulously looking through records

and investigating in the background

before we came out today.

The challenge is now to take it away safely.

Four crates - that's exactly what we're dealing with here.

Loads of property.

Once the crates are full,

the team moves on to the next stage in the process.

They're just heat-shrinking the packages

to ensure the continuity and integrity of the exhibits.

If they're heat-shrinked and documented at the scene,

nobody can say that it's been tampered with, added or taken away.

It's all been documented, what's gone in,

so it's a good way of keeping stuff together.

It'll stay that way until they get opened and re-examined at a later stage.

It's a really satisfying moment, watching all the bags being sealed.

We've got two large crates, they're being sealed up now,

and three filing cabinets, all full of files.

The sheer volume of work that's needed to trawl through the suspected evidence

is proof of the Met Traffic Unit's commitment to stamping out fraud.

They'll stop at nothing to make our roads safe.

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