Episode 1 Claimed and Shamed

Insurance fraud in the UK has hit epidemic levels.

It's costing us over £2 billion every year.

That's almost £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 over £50 to YOUR insurance bill.

But insurers are fighting back, exposing 15 fake claims every hour.

Armed with covert surveillance systems...

Subject out the vehicle.

..sophisticated data analysis techniques

and a highly skilled, dedicated police unit...

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

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

Just don't lie to us.

All those conmen, scammers and cheats on the fiddle are now

caught in the act, on Claimed And Shamed.

Police officers. Can you come to the door, please?

Today, the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department is

involved in a multiple raid.

Forget about any insurance company now, it's a police matter

and I'll be dealing with it.

Surveillance footage is used to capture a fraudster in the act.

Mr Dadabhoy was followed into his place of work, which is

where it all unravelled for him.

What it is, I do quite a lot of pick up and deliver.

And the staggering story of the vet who thought

he could cheat the system but lost everything.

He chose a life of fraud and he's now paying for it.

In these times of financial uncertainty, an insurance

policy that pays out in the event of unemployment can be

worth its weight in gold.

At least that's what 49-year-old Anwar Dadabhoy thought

when he took out such a policy with Aviva in 2008.

It's one of those insurances that you hope you never need,

but unfortunately Mr Dadabhoy was made redundant in 2011.

The good news though was that his policy was still in place

and so he was able to make a claim from it.

He had an entitlement to approximately £1,500 a month,

primarily to offset his mortgage payments

for the period that he was unemployed.

Several months into the claim, one of Aviva's operatives

made a routine call to Mr Dadabhoy to see how things were going.

PHONE RINGS Hello?

Hang on a minute. What was that, sorry?

Did he just say Mr Dadabhoy was at work?

Surely there must be some kind of mistake?

I thought the claim was for unemployment.

To be told that someone claiming to be unemployed was actually

at work wasn't exactly the response Aviva was expecting to hear.

Clearly it would have been inappropriate to continue

a conversation but I think the explanation that he's at work was

less than helpful to Mr Dadabhoy, yeah.

Apparently, aware that on face value it looked as though he might

be pulling a fast one, it wasn't

long before Mr Dadabhoy got in touch to set the record straight.

Well, that's that cleared up then.

For a moment there,

it seemed as though Mr Dadabhoy was one of those insurance fraudsters.

But just in case Aviva had any doubts,

he made sure they knew what a fine and upstanding man he really was.

So, not only was Anwar Dadabhoy a Good Samaritan,

but he also had a cracking sense of humour.

Although as far as Aviva was concerned,

this was no laughing matter.

I do think some people underestimate the resources and sophistication

that insurers have nowadays to identify and detect fraud.

We instructed surveillance on Mr Dadabhoy for a short period,

and that uncovered a vehicle at his house.

A van with "AD Motors" on the side.

And Mr Dadabhoy was followed in that van

to his place of work which is where it all unravelled for him.

See, what it is, I do quite a lot of pick-up and deliver as well.

It wouldn't take long just to give it a once-over, would it?

-Well, I would say about half an hour.

-Yeah, half an hour.

-So, how long have you been here?

-I've been here since October.

-Oh, OK. That's all right, isn't it? It's all right.

-I done it all up.

After examining the footage,

it didn't take Aviva long to decide that this wasn't voluntary work,

and that this definitely wasn't the local mosque.

With rock-solid evidence that Mr Dadabhoy had been earning

money from his own business whilst claiming on his policy,

Aviva decided to pay him a visit.

He was confronted face-to-face

and at that point with the overwhelming evidence,

he admitted that he had been working,

and as a result of that, the claim was repudiated in March 2012.

In July, we instructed the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.

Eventually, he was convicted in the Old Bailey in 2013 of fraud

and received 128 hours' community service.

Now, in case you're thinking Mr Dadabhoy got off lightly,

this case had a rather nasty sting in the tail.

He was also ordered to repay the monies that he had received under

the policy and to pay legal costs which was around £10,000 in total.

Thanks to a routine phone call, Anwar Dadabhoy had found out

the hard way that you can't cheat the system and get away with it.

But what separates him from so many other fraudsters is that he

did have a genuine claim.

The irony about Mr Dadabhoy's case I think is that he was prudent

enough to take out a policy to cover him

and his family in the event that he was unemployed,

he was unemployed, and he had policy to fall back on,

but because of his greed,

and his fraudulent exaggeration of the claim,

he actually forfeited all of the benefit he was entitled to

and because he's now got a conviction, he's going to find

it even harder to get employment in the future.

So, the kind of question is, is it worth it, really?

In Anwar Dadabhoy's case, the answer to that question is a definite no.

Still to come, the doctored pet insurance claims which added

up to a £200,000 fraud.

The reciprocal cat or dog that was in those policies was

-completely made-up.

-And a car insurance scammer's worst nightmare.

Normally, I would say that all of this occurred in one incident

but it's not, it's three separate occurrences.

In January 2012,

the police joined the fight against insurance fraud by forming an elite

squad known as IFED, the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.

I would say to anyone who's considering

committing insurance fraud

that now this is no longer a crime without

consequence that it may have been in the past.

There is a dedicated 40-strong unit known as IFED that work 24/7,

hunting down insurance fraudsters.

They've made over 450 arrests,

and have saved millions of pounds in fraudulent insurance claims,

money which ultimately goes back in our pockets.

From now on, fraudsters need to watch their backs.

So if you're thinking about it, I suggest think again.

There's every chance you'll get an IFED detective

come knocking on your front door.

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

It's 6.45am,

and the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department is carrying out

a raid on a group of suspects who are thought to have been

scamming a health insurance company.

Tom Hill and his team are en route to one of the addresses.

The total amount paid out by the insurance company is about £20,000.

We suspect they've been doing it to other insurance companies as well,

so that figure could rise.

It's thought the suspects are working as a large group

and so IFED is preparing to raid two separate locations.

There's another team going to another address

and there will be a simultaneous arrest if all goes to plan.

With several suspects at the first location,

Tom needs to make sure his team act fast.

It's just a question of securing entry in the first case

and making sure the premises is secure

and all the people inside are accounted for, for our own safety.

A few miles away, the other IFED team has arrived at the address

of the other suspects and are in position ready to make their move.

With raids like this, speed and surprise are everything.

Once alerted, suspects may make a run for it.

I'll have a look round.

So, with the exits covered,

the occupants of both houses are given a rude awakening.

Police officers, can you come to the door, please?

Good morning.

We're City of London Police.

Do you mind if we come in and I'll speak to you?

I'll tell you what's happening, OK? Who else is in the house?

Well, get them down. Are they upstairs?

And I'll speak to you all at once. They're going to have to wake up.

Good morning, hello.

Detective Inspector Ben Flanagan from the City of London Police,

Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department. Can I come in, please?

The crew remain outside at this address.

Meanwhile at the other location,

Tom and his team have rounded up the three occupants of the house.

OK, we're detectives from the City of London Police,

Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.

I'm going to arrest three of you, OK,

on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud.

You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence

if you do not mention when questioned,

something which you later rely on in court.

Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

I am ready to sort this out.

The occupant claims the insurance company hasn't even spoken

to him about the fraud.

OK, well they say they have, and there is a problem, and it has been

reported as a crime

-so I'm going to deal with it now as a police officer, OK?

-Yeah.

So forget about any insurance company now.

It's a police matter, and I'll be dealing with it, OK?

The case is now in the hands of IFED,

which means the investigation will be run by its rules.

To make the raid shorter, IFED always ask for the suspect's

help in locating any potential evidence.

We're going to search your whole house,

but it simplifies it if you can tell us

where any documentation in relation to any claims you may have made are.

Is there anything down here or is it all upstairs?

The suspects are being co-operative,

and have said all paperwork is kept upstairs.

Tom and the team begin with a systematic

search of the entire property.

We've arrested the three people we set out to arrest at this address.

The searches will now take place before the suspects are taken

back to the police station.

We're looking for computer equipment which may have been used to

manufacture fraudulent receipts and invoices,

and we're looking for paperwork in relation to these insurance

claims that are believed to be fraudulent.

Although this case relates to health insurance,

the team have got their eyes open for anything out of the ordinary.

No cupboard in left unsearched.

Even old computers and laptops are seized,

as they could contain vital evidence in the case.

Everything is bagged up and labelled,

ready to be taken away and examined by IFED's investigators.

We haven't found a huge amount of paperwork.

What we have found is computer equipment which

we believe it may be on there.

And we've found stamps

and we've found a large number of memory sticks which also will contain

data. So we're reasonably pleased with what we've found.

IFED's Financial Investigator Simon Styles has been going through

the suspect's finances.

Part of my job as a financial investigator is to establish

what bank accounts people have, what they say they have

and what they did have, going through the records to

confirm that, but also to see what lifestyle they've got.

As part of his investigation, Simon will seize bank statements

and paying in books to enable him

to build a clearer picture of the suspects' financial income.

All the time, I'm totting it up to see what

expenditure is in the house, their outgoings and incomings

and does it make sense or is there a gap,

which would possibly suggest that

they're living from the proceeds of criminal activity?

At the other address,

officers have fond something which could be important to the case.

IFED's Ben Flanagan calls Tom to give him the news.

We've found details of a safety deposit box here,

um, so I'm thinking there may well be documents relating to this

offence or cash from it in the box.

If IFED want to see what's being kept here,

they need to fill in more paperwork to access it.

I've now got to consider whether we get another search warrant

so I'm just going to see who we've got available

and who could draft up the warrant application

and then we'll get over to court this morning and swear out the warrant.

With the searches at both properties complete, the suspects,

along with the evidence seized, are taken back to the station.

But the most important thing now is that IFED get its hands

on the safety deposit box which could contain important evidence.

Still to come, IFED are surprised at what they find.

As you can see, it would appear we've got items of jewellery.

We will be seizing all of this.

With around 65 million pets in the UK, it's fair to say that

we're a nation of animal lovers.

But caring for your furry friend can be an expensive business,

and in recent years, pet insurance has soared, with policies on cats

and dogs paying out over £450 million in 2012 alone.

Inevitably, unscrupulous fraudsters

have seen this boom as an opportunity

to line their own pockets,

and are costing the industry millions of pounds every year.

Officer in IFED, how can I help you?

Simon Styles is a financial investigator at IFED

at the City of London Police.

In 2012, he reviewed a claim submitted by a 38-year-old vet

called Matthew Morgan for injuries to his pet cat, Joe.

Mr Morgan had put in a claim that he was driving with his wife

and the cat was on his wife's lap and they had an accident.

It all appeared pretty straightforward.

But when the insurance company made a routine check with

the surgery who were alleged to have carried out the treatment,

the practice had closed a number of months ago,

which raised alarm bells with the IFED team.

The doctor who had reportedly seen the cat at the time was

actually working there, was on holiday at the time.

The insurance company could smell a rat, and referred the case to Simon.

Over the period of three years, he had set up 19 different

policies on the back of 19 animals that he said he owned.

But he didn't own any of them.

He completely made up every single cat or dog.

So, it wasn't an opportunist fraud.

He saw an opportunity because of where he worked,

but it wasn't an opportunity, it was premeditated.

After three years and over 50 fraudulent claims on pets

that never even existed,

Matthew Morgan really was the cat who got the cream,

and had developed what he thought was a foolproof recipe for success.

He would make a policy for insurance of a cat or dog

that didn't happen.

And at some point,

he would then make a claim which was then stamped to legitimatise

it from the veterinary surgeon

and the claim form would be sent off to the insurers.

Cashing in on phantom pets and using his professional reputation

meant the claims were always paid and in his own words,

-"It was easy money."

-Because it was a professional body,

they wouldn't look at it again and they'd be happy and pay out.

And the money would go straight back into Mr Morgan's account

and Mr Morgan would spend it.

It was spent on cars, it was spent on holidays.

He had family in Australia,

but he didn't just go there, he just had a lavish lifestyle.

Lots of trips out, a lot of weekends and breaks, a lot of meals,

it was just on everyday life but luxurious things

and a lot of people can't afford that. And he could afford it

in any event, but he just chose to go a little bit more.

Quite simply, Matthew Morgan was a man living beyond his means

and driven by greed.

I worked out that throughout the period of his fraudulent claims,

it was a period of some 37 months,

and during that time he'd actually legitimately earned £143,000.

That averages over £5,000 a month which most people would think

was a fair wage, and there was no need to do anything else.

But he was greedy, he saw an opportunity, and he wanted more.

And he got £198,000 more than he should have had.

Unless he had been identified by the insurers and investigated by us,

he'd still be carrying on, I've no doubt of that.

After abusing his position of trust

and using his expert knowledge to deceive insurance companies,

Matthew Morgan was well and truly in the doghouse.

I take personal satisfaction, as me and my colleagues do,

into convicting these individuals.

There's only one place for them, and that's behind bars.

Simon's view was echoed by the judge, when Morgan appeared

at the Old Bailey on 23rd August 2013 and was jailed for two years.

He had lost his possessions, his home and his career after

being struck off the register of veterinary surgeons.

Matthew Morgan had lose everything.

Matthew Morgan was earning a lot of money legitimately.

He had no need to commit fraud. No need whatsoever.

He could have had holidays, he could have had comfy cars,

he could have visited his family abroad.

He chose a life of fraud and he's now paying for it.

For unscrupulous criminals,

car insurance fraud can be a massive earner,

worth almost £400 million a year. But insurance companies

and the police are clamping down and fighting back.

One of the biggest threats to these fraudsters

are forensic engineers like Barry Wheeler,

and he's seeing more and more cases

where crashes aren't what they might appear to be at first glance.

The job of a forensic engineer is to look at the damage on the cars in

order to establish whether the cars

have genuinely crashed in an accident,

or whether an accident's been manufactured,

or whether the cars have never hit each other at all.

A self-confessed petrolhead, Barry has been examining crash scenes

and damaged vehicles for almost 30 years.

So, when Barry speaks, insurance companies listen.

This damage here takes the form of horizontal scratches.

Something has scraped along the side of the car. This is a vandal scratch.

That's not related to that at all.

That carries on through but then separate on here,

you've got a damage on the bumper.

He's reversed into a post or something.

You can see that there's this vertical line.

Quite normally, they would say that all of this occurred in one incident,

but it's not. It's three separate occurrences.

Completely different accidents.

And there's no limit to the lengths some people will go to

in order to boost their claim.

I've seen cases where people have literally hit the wing of their

car with a hammer and tried to induce an accident but that's terrible.

You'll see that as soon as you walk up to the car.

You know full well it's nothing to do with it.

An opportunist taking a hammer to their pride

and joy is one thing, but what Barry's dealing with more and more

are criminal gangs who will go to extraordinary measures to cash in.

There are a number of people that want to make

fraudulent insurance claims and they will make an accident happen.

Crash for cash is where people is where people will either get

two vehicles which are both damaged

and say that they've crashed into each other, they may just get a car

and crash into it on purpose and say it was an accident,

sometimes they'll even dupe a member of the public into crashing

into them, but they do it on purpose in order to say that

an accident has occurred so that they can make a claim.

Having dealt with thousands of car crashes over the years,

Barry knows all too well that the real cost of this

type of crime isn't measured in pound notes.

When people are duped into having accidents, it's traumatic.

Lorry drivers, they're people like you and I.

If they crashed into a vehicle, it affects them.

I mean they may lose their job if they have too many accidents

but it's not their fault if someone's causing it.

So it's not a victimless crime, there's a lot of victims involved.

And of course people are getting injured as well,

genuinely getting injured.

The good news is that with the help of experts like Barry,

car insurance fraud is being stamped out.

I think fraudsters need to know that it's coming to an end.

The courts are becoming aware of their actions.

Everybody in the industry is aware of what they're doing.

We have the tools to prove the frauds that are being committed

and it's being clamped down on.

One of the biggest success stories in the fight against this

crime dates back to 2007

when the Claims Fraud Intelligence Team at Aviva were alerted to

some suspicious activity from an individual linked to a claims

management company.

There were a large number of claims that we received.

The accident location was very similar,

the accident circumstances were all very similar, they were

pulling out of side roads and they all linked back to the same company.

So we investigated further.

The idea of a claims management company is to help take

the stress off the policy holder,

but this particular company was only interested in helping itself.

They were deliberately crashing vehicles into each other

to claim for hire, recovery, storage.

The engineers reports that they were submitting were not

consistent with the damage when our engineers inspected them.

The hire documentation was fraudulent

and they were submitting a high number of injury claims.

The company had been staging accidents

and then cashing in on the claims, and it soon became clear that

Aviva were dealing with motor insurance fraud on a massive scale.

I don't think I anticipated how quickly it was going to grow.

It grew on a weekly basis,

and very quickly we had a large number of claims and this was

a massive fraud ring of 64 live claims that we were dealing with.

But the surprises didn't end there.

The investigation revealed that over a four year period,

the directors of the company had submitted over 120 bogus claims

for accidents that never even happened,

in a scam worth £2 million.

Unaware that the insurance companies were onto them, the fraudsters

thought they were laughing all the way to the bank.

But they were about to get a nasty surprise of their own.

We presented all the evidence

and our findings to the Metropolitan Police,

and they decided that this was an organised crime

and it was something that

they were going to investigate and take further.

Samsul Haque received five years' imprisonment

and ten years' disqualified of being

a company director. And at the time, that was the largest ever

prison sentence for conspiracy to defraud an insurer,

so Aviva were particularly proud

of being involved in this investigation.

Samsul Haque's two associates were given a total of six years behind

bars, and banned from being company directors for five years each.

The trio had been well and truly claimed and shamed,

and the tough sentences they received sent out a clear

message to anyone else who thought insurance fraud is easy money.

I think before this case,

fraudsters thought that they could get away with this

kind of activity, that the

worst that was going to happen was that their claims wouldn't be paid,

but I think the largest ever prison sentence of five years

shows that this is a precedence-setting case

and that they will be prosecuted and they will be sentenced.

Police officers! Can you come to the door, please?

Who else is in the house? They're going to have to wake up.

IFED has simultaneously raided two addresses in connection with

a suspected medical insurance fraud group.

There is a problem, and it's been reported as a crime

so I'm going to be dealing with it now as a police officer, OK?

So far, officers have uncovered laptops, memory sticks, and

several rubber stamps, all thought to be key in their investigation.

The operation's gone well, although the biggest lead of the day

may have come from the IFED team that raided the other property.

We've found details of a safety deposit box here.

There may well be documents relating to this offence in the box.

The suspects have been arrested

and taken to the local police station for questioning, while

the IFED team apply for a warrant to access the safety deposit box.

It's vital that IFED gets to it as quickly as possible,

as they want to ensure that no-one else tries to remove or

destroy any potential evidence within it.

Traditionally, items of high value are stored in these boxes,

so the IFED team is keen to discover exactly what's inside.

And as you can see, it would appear that we've got items of jewellery.

We will be seizing all of this.

The box is packed full with jewellery, documents and other

items of value, which may be evidence for the IFED investigation.

We've got a cash credit invoice here for £1,800.

We've found lots of jewellery.

Until we get that priced,

we're not going to know exactly what the value of that is.

But it will be very interesting

because obviously they're going to

have to account for those items.

It'll be very interesting to find out how these items

came into their possession.

So all in all, it's been a very successful day.

That's everything, yeah.

The contents of the safety deposit box is IFED's largest ever

haul of jewellery.

The case is still under investigation.