Episode 5 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 con men, scammers and cheats on the fiddle are now

caught in the act and claimed and shamed.

Coming up, a fake insurance company that targets the elderly...

..undercover filming lands a conman in the sin bin...

A further twist was that it was reported that he was

suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

..and IFED carries out a raid on a suspect.

You're never sure, exactly, what you're going to find

until you actually go through that door.

Where would we be without a good bit of TV?

We're a nation addicted to our set-top boxes and many of us

rely on product insurance to protect us if anything goes wrong.

So, it's a good job there are people like Jonathan Stockting,

who was determined to make sure none of us missed out

on the shows we loved.

He ran a Swansea-based company that came under

the remit of Trading Standards' Rhys Harris.

The company was selling

a service package, maintenance package,

sometimes it was called insurance, but, basically,

it was a product that, if you had a Sky system and it broke down,

they claimed that they would come out and fix it between two and six hours.

Sounds like a great idea,

a service that will have you back up and running, or rather lounging,

within six hours, except, guess what?

Yep, it didn't exist.

The company operated by cold calling consumers and the only information

they had when they would cold call them is the consumer's name,

address and also their telephone number.

Despite the fact they had so little information on the customers,

their sales patter was pretty convincing.

They gave the impression that they were Sky, they were phoning from Sky.

But it was a total fabrication.

None of the companies that the bogus insurance company

pretended to represent had anything to do with the scam.

Instead of duping insurance companies with fraudulent claims,

Stockting had taken it to the next level by setting up

a fake insurance company of his own that preyed on innocent people.

The victims were carefully targeted with fraudsters deliberately calling

during the day to catch elderly and vulnerable people at home.

Some of the calls were very distressing to us listening,

but it was more distressing listening to the consumer reacting

to the way that they've been treated.

SALES PERSON: Sorry?

Yes?

Right...

You'd hear these consumers being quite fast in not wanting to

give their card details over the phone, however,

they would then eventually fold and give their card details over

to these sales staff who quite cunningly got it out of them.

With such an aggressive sales technique,

many people were confused,

hounded and even intimidated into buying the fake insurance.

Their general tactic was to bully, so if they could get

someone elderly on the phone, they would push and push.

In some cases, it was quite disgusting the way the sales staff

would actually speak to these elderly and vulnerable consumers.

-SALES PERSON:

-Oh, my...!

A team of 20 scammers worked at the bogus insurance call centre.

They showed no mercy to their victims,

bullying people into handing over their money.

It was fraud on an industrial scale.

Among the 7,500 customers targeted by the group was Carol Oatey.

Well, I was cold called out of the blue.

I think it went along the lines of,

"We noticed that your satellite insurance has expired,"

though how they would know that, I don't know,

I think that's just an opening line.

PHONE RINGS 'And told me how

'expensive it would be...' Hello?

'..to call an engineer out without satellite insurance.'

And I said, "Yes, OK."

And gave them my bank details!

The fraudsters persuaded their victims to sign up to

a yearly payment of between £70 and £100,

with the promise that their satellite box would be covered 24/7.

I mean, £80 might not seem like a lot of money to some people,

but when you're a pensioner, it is a lot of money.

In order to appear genuine,

the company sent out paperwork to their victims.

It was at this point that Carol realised something was wrong.

I went to file the paperwork and realised that

I already had perfectly good insurance that hadn't expired.

I don't think I've ever felt so embarrassed in my life,

really, to think that I could have been taken in, but it really

was a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I'd been conned.

Sadly, Carol wasn't the only one.

In a two-year period, the callous fake insurance crew

netted half a million pounds.

Anybody who thinks that conning the elderly

into giving away their money is a good way of earning a living

should think again.

But the net was closing in.

Unbeknownst to the scammers,

victims had alerted Swansea Trading Standards.

They started to investigate

and identified the three men behind the company -

Paul Delamare,

Jordan Diment

and the boss, Jonathan Stockting.

Evidence of organised criminal fraud mounted as more

and more victims came forward, and Swansea Trading Standards

decided it was time to pay the call centre a visit.

We struggled to get through a locked door.

Once we got in through that door, sales staff went

and rubbed their name off a board.

Some of the staff tried evading us going down the back stairs,

and then, when we were there, the fire alarm went off.

I went to see the security guard in charge of the building

and he basically told us

someone had set a false alarm off on the floor below us.

Once in the property,

Trading Standards wanted to get to the hub of the fraudulent

activity and needed to access the computers kept behind locked doors.

It took a locksmith three hours to break in.

We got into the room,

our computer forensic examiner looked at the computers

and came back to us at a later date after we'd left the premises

and told us that someone had remotely accessed that computer and deleted

everything and tried to download something called Evidence Eliminator.

The operation had been stopped in its tracks.

It was the last Trading Standards would hear from them...for a while.

Coming up, the fraudsters restart their fake insurance company again,

but Trading Standards decide to shut them down once and for all.

This time we done a faster entry warrant where we took

the police on entry.

Everybody was arrested where they were sat.

It's thought that as many as one in four people

have suffered a personal injury,

a figure that won't come as a surprise to the insurance industry,

which is seeing a dramatic increase in these types of claims.

More than a million of these claims come from workplace accidents

like the one that David Ribchester suffered in February 2006.

DCI Dave Wood, who heads up

the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, worked on the case.

Mr Ribchester reported to his insurance company that he'd

suffered an accident at work.

He said he was up a set of ladders that collapsed underneath him...

..and as a result of the fall, he's injured both his wrists

when he hit the ground and as a result of that accident,

he suffered life-changing injuries.

According to David, the ladder had fallen on both of his wrists,

which, he claimed, left him unable to do even the most basic tasks.

One was driving a car, two was playing his favourite sport, rugby,

and lastly, and perhaps most important of all,

he couldn't pick up his small daughter...

and this was the worst thing for him, so he told us.

But David's injuries weren't just physical,

as John Beadle from insurers RSA explains.

A further twist was that it was reported that he was suffering from

post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of the accident.

With such serious physical and emotional damage,

David's claim stacked up to a huge sum.

He claimed ultimately for £900,000 or thereabouts

in terms of compensation to compensate for his loss of earnings,

and for the care that he would need going forward in his life.

It was a massive compensation bill, one which would have taken care of

the 31-year-old for the rest of his life.

This case is one of the biggest single instances that I've

investigated in its operation so far.

Almost £1 million going to one person, for him,

would almost be like a lottery win.

INDISTINCT CHATTERING

As with any large insurance claim, the insurers looked into it

thoroughly and they didn't like what they saw.

There came a point of time

when we began to doubt the truth around the extent

of Mr Ribchester's alleged injuries and incapacity,

and so we began to investigate and, as part of that investigation,

we deployed some surveillance.

All seemed fine at first, but then they noticed something which

blew his claim out of the water.

It showed a person going normally about their daily life

and there wasn't any apparent incapacity or injury that

prevented him leading a normal life.

During the course of the surveillance,

Mr Ribchester was seen driving his car.

He told his insurers he couldn't drive a car.

He was also seen shopping in a supermarket.

Again, he told his insurers he couldn't carry out that task.

On Mr Ribchester's birthday in July 2009,

he was actually filmed hosting a barbecue at his home address,

during which he erected some garden furniture,

he greeted guests with a firm handshake of his right hand.

He was seen flipping burgers on the actual barbecue itself

and also, several times, picking up his young daughter

with his supposedly severely injured right hand.

The footage proved that David was lying about his injuries

in order to inflate the size of his claim,

but the surveillance didn't stop there, and what the police saw next

revealed the shocking extent of his fraud.

The biggest nail in Mr Ribchester's coffin was actually

the surveillance footage of him playing rugby at his local club,

so there he is, grabbing the ball,

gripping it tightly, fending off tackles,

charging along the grass turf,

things that he said he couldn't do, would never be able to do for

the rest of his days, clearly captured on surveillance footage,

looking in quite fine fettle running across the rugby pitch.

That surveillance footage was, at our request,

shown to the medical experts who, as a result, said that,

in their opinion, that he was grossly exaggerating or making

up the level of injury or incapacity that he was suffering from.

Clearly, David was trying it on.

Armed with a wealth of footage,

the insurers decided to tackle the fraud

and pass the case to the police.

IFED detectives arrested Mr Ribchester at his home address

in the northeast of England and some months later, he appeared at

the Old Bailey, where he was charged with fraud by false representation.

The judge in fact said that this man was greedy

and he also went on to say that,

as a result of greedy men like Mr Ribchester,

that other genuine claimants could sometimes

be put under scrutiny as a result of his selfish actions.

David Ribchester's foul play had well and truly

landed him in the sin bin.

For exaggerating his claim, the penalty was eight months.

During IFED's operation, we'd seemed to come across two different

types of fraudsters in this insurance fraud arena.

One would be the organised criminals,

the gangsters that do it for a living,

and the other lot I would describe as greedy people that see

an opportunity, potentially a meal ticket or a lottery win,

like Mr Ribchester.

Ironically,

if Mr Ribchester had been honest about the extent of his injuries,

he would have been legally entitled to about £250,000 compensation.

But because he lied,

the whole of his claim was thrown out and he was left with no money,

a prison sentence and a criminal record.

Still to come, a rude driver's insurance claim hits the skids

thanks to CCTV evidence...

There's no evidence of a slow joining of traffic, and

as far as the creeping along goes, I'll let you be the judge of that.

..and victims of the fake insurance company see justice served.

And how dare they...how dare they do that to the elderly!

The Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, or IFED for short,

is an insurance scammer's worst nightmare.

There is a dedicated 40-strong unit that work 24/7

hunting down insurance fraudsters.

The team were set up over two years ago to crack down on

insurance crime in the UK.

Is there anything here that shouldn't be here...

that we're going to find?

In that time, it's made over 450 arrests

and seen over 200 prosecutions.

If it's a fraud and it's in insurance, then it may well

come to IFED's attention and IFED will take the necessary action.

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

Today, DS Mark Forster and his IFED team are on their way to arrest

a suspect in what they believe is a case of insurance fraud.

It all started when the suspect racked up so many parking fines

that bailiffs impounded their car.

She subsequently reported to police that her car had been stolen

and also made a claim to the insurance company

in relation to the theft of that vehicle.

Mark has deliberately organised an early-morning raid

so there's more chance of catching the suspect at home.

And he's well aware of the challenges that

his team could face when they go in to make the arrest.

You're never sure exactly what's behind a door.

You can do your intelligence checks to give you a good indication

of what you're going to find and who you're going to find,

but until you actually go through that door, you're never sure.

-RADIO:

-4-1-0...

Yeah, can you show us on the scene, please? Car 10-8-4.

They arrive at the suspect's address and get into position.

The little one.

Oh, right, OK.

Mark's hoping that the early start means the suspect is

more likely to be at home.

-Good morning.

-'And they are.'

Police. I'd just like to speak to you inside, please.

-Come in.

-Yeah? Thanks very much.

-Thank you.

INDISTINCT CHATTER INSIDE

Just one of my colleagues come in as well.

The cameras stay outside.

At five minutes past seven, I'm arresting you on suspicion of

committing fraud by false representation.

You don't 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. Do you understand?

With the arrest made, the operation has got off to a good start.

I don't think she was expecting us at all. She was quite surprised.

My colleague, when he arrested her, she had no idea what it was about.

But the arrest is only the beginning.

The success of the operation relies on finding evidence

of the alleged fraud.

IFED are searching for paperwork that relates to the vehicle.

Luckily, the suspect is proving to be co-operative.

We've asked her...basically,

so we don't have to go through the whole house,

where she keeps all her documents, correspondence,

and she's indicated to us, in her bedroom.

And that's just where they find potential evidence.

This is some of the evidence that we've seized from the property,

from the bedroom of the lady we've arrested this morning.

Unusually for the IFED team, the potential evidence in this case

is paper-based and doesn't involve phones or computers.

Most IFED raids last several hours, but, in this case,

Mark's thankful that it's been relatively straightforward.

Very happy. It's all gone very smoothly.

We're, you know, in and out of the address within, sort of, 45 minutes.

She's now on her way back to the City of London, where she'll be

interviewed in relation to the fraud that we believe that she's committed.

Mark's pleased with how the day has gone.

The arrest has been made, potential evidence has been collected

and the investigation can now move on to the next stage.

There's nothing more frustrating than coming home from

a hard day's work, turning on the TV and it's broken.

But don't worry - if you've got insurance on it, you'll be sorted.

Well, not if you're one of the 7,500 people who were cold called

and bullied into buying a bogus maintenance package by

Jonathan Stockting and his crew,

who'd set up a fake insurance company.

The group targeted elderly and vulnerable people

with insurance deals that they didn't want, need or,

in some cases, already had.

I mean, £80 might not seem like a lot of money to some people,

but when you're a pensioner,

it is a lot of money.

After a mountain of complaints at Swansea Trading Standards,

the team paid the phony operation a visit.

We got into the room, our computer forensic examiner

looked at the computers and told us that someone had

remotely accessed that computer and deleted everything.

With the fake insurance company closed,

Trading Standards thought that would be the end of it,

but it wasn't long before the complaints started to pour in again.

It appeared that the company was still operating.

And at this point, we decided the only thing we could do

was to raid the company again.

'And this time we done the faster entry warrant,

'where we took the police.'

On entry, everybody was arrested where they were sat,

not allowing anybody to interfere with

any of the evidence that we were going to gather.

This was the largest operation that Swansea had been a part of.

It involved 50 police officers,

along with various teams from the council.

Despite this, the scammers had shredded all paper evidence,

but the key to the crime was their calls.

We found call recordings, but those calls certainly helped us

a great deal with our investigation.

What was perhaps more shocking was that this wasn't just

a few fraudsters, but a team of around 20, all knowing that,

every day, every call was conning an elderly person out of money.

And you had a big sales floor which was populated by all these staff

and, probably, they were looking at up to 20 staff

at some point in the business,

and everybody in that business had to be aware of what was going on

and was implicit in it, and it was all linked and all very loyal.

The audio proved to be the killer piece of evidence that

allowed the council to build a case against the scammers.

They took Jonathan Stockting and 16 members of his team to court.

It was the culmination of a two-year investigation into a scam

that had covered most of Wales and parts of England,

dialling in an estimated £500,000.

The weight of evidence against them meant that the three main players

pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to defraud.

Jonathan Stockting and Paul Delamare

both got sentences of four years

and Jordan Diment was given three-and-a-half years.

In all, the judge handed down jail terms totalling

almost 30 years to 14 people involved in the scam.

When they were sentenced,

we felt that this was justice for all those consumers who

we either had to speak to or listen to

and the way in which they'd been treated, it wasn't really

about how much that we felt, it was justice had been served for them.

People like Carol, who was a victim of the fraud.

It's like mugging, isn't it? It's mugging over the phone,

and you feel just as violated

as if they'd hit you on the back of the neck.

And how dare they...

how dare they do that to the elderly!

Buses are great.

Well, if you haven't got a car and, let's be honest,

when you're behind the wheel, the last thing you want to see is this.

Being stuck behind a slow-moving bus can be frustrating.

But for one driver, he thought it was well behind him,

until it, allegedly, collided with him.

Lee Ingram of FirstGroup dealt with the incident.

When the other vehicle driver has submitted his claim,

he has stated that he was creeping forward

and the bus has just hit him straight in the back of the car

and damaged the side of his car at the same time.

But when FirstGroup asked for the bus driver's version of events,

he had a completely different take on it.

The bus driver in this case clearly says that he was passing

the third-party vehicle, when the third party has given him the V-sign

and then pulled across straight in front of the bus, leaving him

no opportunity to avoid a collision.

The two versions didn't add up.

It was the claimant's word against the bus driver's,

so Lee Ingram turned to his fail-safe back up - CCTV.

The footage clearly supports the bus driver's account.

Keep your eye on the red car on the left.

The first thing you noticed from the footage is that

the third party has clearly made up a set of circumstances to

tell his solicitor in order to pursue his claim.

There's no evidence of a slow joining of traffic, and

as far as the creeping along goes, I'll let you be the judge of that.

The red car can be seen driving at a normal speed,

but from the camera on the side of the bus,

the car pulls in front of it, cutting it up

and clipping it on the front.

CCTV footage is very important in circumstances such as this.

The footage shows the car driver wasn't telling the truth,

but it also reveals something else as well.

To add further insult, the driver just did that!

Oh, hang on a minute! What was that?

Two fingers?

Oh, no, it's just the one. Well, that's a bit rude!

There doesn't really seem to be any logical reason as to why

the other party should be so angry towards the bus driver.

I know there are situations where some people

just do not like buses getting in front of them in traffic.

I think this is a particular case where the other driver has

just decided to not let the bus through

and has almost stuck his fingers up in a V-sign to say,

"No way, mate! You're not coming past me!"

and then decided to go for it in front of the bus.

The claimant in this instance is clearly used to getting his own way.

On this occasion, he has tried to muscle in on a 12-ton vehicle,

which might not have been the wisest of moves(!)

And his offensive behaviour didn't stop there.

After the accident, the third party was very abusive towards

the bus driver, constantly using foul language.

He claimed to have a sore neck

and yet refused to have an ambulance called for him.

Despite this, he later submitted a claim for multiple personal

injuries but, surprisingly, nothing for damage to the car,

because, as the CCTV showed, there was none.

His motivation seemed to be personal gain.

He was heard to say that he was intending to get a new car

out of this incident.

The only actual damage was a small scratch to the side of the bus.

The CCTV proved that the claimant wasn't owed compensation

because he'd never actually been injured.

In fact, it showed that he owed them for the damage to the bus.

The claimant did not receive any compensation

arising from this incident.

We did however recover the £34.50 cost of repairing our vehicle.

More proof that it's better to keep

both hands firmly on the wheel when driving.