Episode 6 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 bills.

But insurers are fighting back,

exposing 15 fake claims every hour.

-Armed with covert surveillance systems...

-Subject out of 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

and Claimed And Shamed.

Today, the pedestrian who forgot her green cross code

and tried to cash in on it.

She looked both ways? No, that's not true at all.

The police's insurance fraud enforcement department

catch a suspected fraudster with his trousers down.

I've no pants on. Do you want me to get dressed?

And the jaw-dropping lengths that one woman went to in her bid

to scam insurance companies.

In my two and a half years in charge of IFED, this is the most

despicable and shocking case I've come across by some distance.

Nowadays, we're bombarded by adverts from claims management

companies telling us that we could be owed a small fortune,

in the event of an accident.

This has led to a boom in claims for personal injuries.

And while many of these are legitimate, some are not.

I think that some people are under the misguided conception that

wherever there's an incident, then there is a claim to be made.

That's not true at all.

In order to be successful in a claim in this country,

you've got to prove that someone was negligent.

But proving negligence isn't as easy as some people think.

And public transport operator First Group find themselves

battling dubious claims on a weekly basis.

One particular incident which raised such a claim

occurred on a busy bus route in Central London.

We have a woman alleging that she's looked left and right,

she's seen no traffic coming, so she's assumed it's safe to cross,

she's stepped out and the bus has hit her.

A pedestrian versus a bus is only ever going to have one winner.

Now, as any youngster with good road sense will tell you,

before crossing the road, it's vital that you stop, look both ways,

listen, and look again.

And although the pedestrian in this case claims

she did exactly that, First Group weren't so sure.

The one thing that would suggest that's not true is

if you look right, you would see a 15 tonne bus coming towards you

and you should be able to, therefore, stop and not get run over.

Historically,

cases like this would be one person's word against another,

but thanks to modern technology,

it's becoming easier to find out what really happened.

She's given her version of events,

the driver will give his version of events.

The one factual piece of evidence we have is the CCTV footage itself.

The camera doesn't lie.

It shows a true picture of what actually happened

and it's an invaluable source of evidence.

Most buses have at least ten CCTV cameras.

And although they're primarily used for passenger and driver safety,

they can also be very handy when it comes to settling claims like this.

When we've looked at the CCTV footage,

we're expecting to see a woman stepping out from between two

vehicles, having looked both ways,

and stepping out just not having seen the bus for some reason.

It sounds reasonable enough, but is it what really happened?

You'll see the lady suddenly appear from between the two vehicles.

She doesn't look, she just looks left, steps out.

There's no attempt to look right.

The woman steps out between a stationary sightseeing bus

and a trailer. The double decker is so large,

she can't see the other bus coming her way.

And to make matters worse, she doesn't even look.

If you're going to step out from between two vehicles,

your view's going to be very poor.

You need to make sure that you can see what's coming before you

-step out.

-The driver has no time to react.

And, as quick as he is on the brakes, the woman is

hit by the front corner of the bus, throwing her up in the air.

There is no way he's going to avoid hitting her when she steps out

when the bus is that close and the footage shows exactly that.

From the driver's perspective, it looks like a devastating blow.

But the multiple cameras positioned at various points on the bus

give a clear picture of exactly how severe the collision was

and what happened next.

You can see the force of the impact has driven her to the ground

and she's rolled underneath the flatbed truck,

but she's out and up pretty quickly.

As severe as the impact looked,

thankfully the woman wasn't seriously hurt.

But it wasn't long before

First Group received a claim for her injuries.

The injuries that were subsequently claimed for compensation from us

were probably more to do with her hitting the ground than

actually the impact with the bus itself.

She's got some minor cuts and bruises,

the ever present whiplash claim, she's got an injury to her knee,

which has necessitated her having to use crutches for up to six weeks.

Some nine months after the accident,

she's still suffering from her injuries.

Incidents like this are nothing new and First Group find

themselves dealing with claims like this on a weekly basis.

In light of the advertising that goes on today

and it's made quite clear how much you can get from a simple slip

or a trip or a fall at work,

it's probably reasonable to assume that this lady may have assumed

she could get £3-3,500 for this accident,

so you could argue - why wouldn't she put the claim in?

I would say because it's an out-and-out lie, to be honest,

but that's just my opinion.

It may sound harsh, but it's important to remember that the

woman alleged to have looked both ways.

And is claiming that any negligence lies with the driver.

Such allegations mean that in cases like this,

it isn't just the injured parties who can be the victims.

What happens to the drivers that are confronted with these things on a daily basis?

I watched the CCTV footage back on this one, you can

see the horror and the general anguish in the driver's face.

He just looks horrified that this has happened

and these sorts of things, when drivers are confronted with these sorts of situations,

this wasn't even a serious injury, had it been more serious,

some of the drivers can walk away with serious emotional scars, it can

affect their confidence, the way they drive,

and it can have a big knock-on effect.

Although this case was a genuine accident,

the woman tried to exaggerate her claim, but there are some people out

there who will create an accident with the sole purpose of cashing in.

Someone who has first-hand experience of this despicable

crime is bus driver Maxine Wild,

who found herself at the centre of a number of fraudulent claims

after a motorist deliberately collided with her bus.

I love my job.

I really do and I want to keep on doing it.

But when this incident happened, I thought, "That's it.

"I've finally found my dream job after 30 years of looking

"and it's going to be taken away from me."

I were a little bit unsure of whether I'd still have a

job at the end of it all.

They think it's victimless, but it isn't.

They don't care if I'm unemployed.

They don't care if I have sleepless nights.

Thanks to CCTV footage, Maxine's case was thrown out.

But what about our pedestrian who appeared to forget her green

cross code and then exaggerated her claim?

Armed with video evidence of the whole incident, First Group

felt they had a watertight case against the woman's claims.

Upon viewing the CCTV footage in this particular case,

we then revisited the lady's statement.

she's trying to cross the road, that's true.

She's been hit by a bus, this is also true. She's looked both ways?

No, that's not true at all. And the footage clearly shows she hasn't,

so we've gone back to her solicitors and we've said, "The statement given

"by your client just doesn't match up with what's on the CCTV footage.

"Here's a copy. Tell us what you think." We haven't heard since.

Given the video evidence,

it's hardly surprising that this case has stalled.

And Lee is keen to point out that injured parties are only

entitled to compensation when they are not at fault.

The customer care side of First Group, which I'm involved in,

very much just want to deal with the genuine claims as quickly as

possible and for the right amount and that's what we're really there for.

When we have incidents like this, it slows procedures down cos

we have to investigate claims that are not genuine.

Her statement was not true.

And although I feel sorry for anyone that's been hit by a bus,

regardless of how it's happened, it doesn't mean that we're just going to keel over

and pay every single claim because we can only really pay

cases where we are negligent and in this case, it's just not.

So, if there's a lesson to be learned from a case like this,

it's that when there's no blame, there's no claim.

Still to come, an insurance company turns the tables

and reclaims what's rightfully theirs.

He's got no idea that we're coming to recover the vehicle today,

which is our weapon, if you like, the element of surprise.

And one of the most shocking cases that IFED has ever dealt with.

It was one fraud after another fraud after another fraud.

When insurance fraud hit an all-time high,

the City of London Police decided that enough was enough

and formed a specialist unit with the sole aim of tackling

the fraudsters head on.

IFED is a dedicated team that deals with insurance fraud.

Whatever insurance policy there is out there, we investigate it.

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

It's 6:45am and this team of IFED officers are heading up north

to investigate a suspected case of car insurance fraud.

Aman Taylor is heading up the operation.

We're hoping to find any computer equipment or any documentation

which we can use as evidence later, once we get to the interview stage.

It's going to be slightly more difficult than dealing with

a standard case. He's gone to lengths to cover up his tracks.

Every raid has its own risks and obstacles and today is no exception.

The property itself, we've looked at from research,

we believe to be a big enough property that it's going to

take a few of us to secure the property.

That's why we've got uniform to assist us

with securing the property and the person once we arrive there.

When the team arrive at the location, the property is

so large that Aman does a quick reccie to find the door.

I think this may be the property.

-I'm just going to have a quick look at the driveway.

-OK.

As the building is unlit and pretty large,

it takes the team a few moments to work out the layout.

Pardon?

Oh.

But nothing deters the IFED team, and soon they're at the front door,

ready to give their suspect an early morning wake-up.

Yeah.

The team are in, although unsurprisingly,

not everyone is particularly pleased to see them.

Oh, dearie me, I can't believe this.

I've never had owt like this in my bloody life!

After a dressing-down by a surprised family member,

Aman arrests the suspect

and explains the implications this will have on his privacy

Do I need to get dressed?

Yeah, what I will do, because you are now under arrest,

-what I'll ask is that...

-Have you arrested him?

-Yes.

A uniformed officer will stay with you, just while you get dressed.

-Well, I've no pants on.

-I know, he's not going to stand there

and watch, but he's got to be with you while you're under arrest

-because you are under arrest.

-Yeah, that's fine.

I'll go and get dressed.

Once arrested, you are never out of sight of the police officers,

regardless of what you are - or are not - wearing, and it's not uncommon

for suspects to try to destroy incriminating evidence.

Meanwhile, DI Dom Parkin explains to the suspect's family

that their cooperation could make the process a lot easier.

Rather than us searching the house from top to bottom,

we would say to him, "We are here to search for documentation

"for the insurance claim."

If you want to show us the drawer where it is, and we're satisfied

that that's what we need, then that may conclude our search.

-But if he says, "Search the house", then we'll search the house.

-OK.

Keen not to have the entire house searched, the suspect agrees to show

Aman and the team where he keeps the documentation they are after.

Do you want me to go get it for you? Do you want me to come with you?

Yeah, if you can show us where we're going, is it within this house?

No, it's outside. There's nothing in this house.

We'll come with you to the office, you can show us where the office is.

The suspect is giving his full cooperation, and is claiming

to have all of the information Aman needs in one briefcase.

But of course, IFED never take what suspects say at face value,

and there is absolutely zero chance of them leaving it at that.

So everything business-related would be in this office?

And that is your work computer there?

Yeah, if you have to take the work computer, that's fine.

'So far, we've located our subject'

so we'll be looking at completing our search,

seizing what we need to seize, and then taking... to be interviewed.

I'll put that down as 80/02.

To be sure of building the strongest case possible,

the team are seizing anything that could provide

the evidence they need.

We'll take these, and then there is a possibility that

we might even have a trace of him producing a document on Word.

But computers and laptops aren't the only things that can leave

an incriminating trail.

What we can do with the phones is, we can download the data from them.

We can get any text messages, phone calls,

anything like that that's relevant from the phones themselves.

Before leaving, the office is given a final sweep

for any more evidence that might help secure a conviction.

-Looks like it's daylight.

-It was dark when we got in.

Several hours after arriving, the search is complete,

but for Aman and his team, this is just the beginning.

The good news, though, is that things are looking promising.

Now we go back to the police station,

refer back to the exhibits that we've seized, and we can then

use them for interview once we've got him back at the police station.

As anyone who drives a car knows,

being without it can be a real pain in the neck,

so in the event of a crash,

a complimentary hire car can be a real life-saver,

and thanks to legislation,

it's something that insurance policyholders can take advantage of.

The industry works in that,

if somebody has an accident in a car and it's not their fault,

they are entitled in law to a replacement like-for-like car,

so if, for example, you have an estate car

where you need to put a dog in the back, a pet or a pushchair,

you're entitled to a replacement like-for-like car.

Sounds great, doesn't it?

But of course, the idea of a free set of wheels

also appeals to fraudsters.

After all, why pay for your own when you can use someone else's?

To combat this threat, insurance companies have dedicated teams

tasked with keeping a watchful eye on their hire cars.

Neil Thomas heads up the Asset Protection Unit at Accident Exchange.

We have about 3,000 vehicles, mainly prestige vehicles.

It's our responsibility to make sure those vehicles,

when they're out on hire, are fully protected,

are being used effectively, they're not getting involved in things we don't want them getting involved in,

so we're really in charge of making sure the assets are safe

and making sure people don't disappear with very valuable cars.

Sadly, sometimes cars do go missing,

which is exactly what happened when one of Accident Exchange's customers

submitted a claim for crash damage to his pride and joy.

We replaced his car, which is an Aston Martin,

with one of our Bentley cars, which is a Bentley GT Continental,

which is around the same value.

So far so good,

but when Accident Exchange began to investigate the claim,

they soon discovered something a little odd.

The collision was between an Aston Martin and a third-party vehicle.

Our enquiries revealed that the client owned both vehicles,

so he potentially staged an accident.

This aroused our suspicions to say it's probably a fraudulent claim.

An investigation revealed the accident had been staged,

but strangely enough,

it was at this time that the policyholder went off the radar.

After several months of unsuccessfully trying to contact him

the Asset Protection Unit resorted

to what's known in the trade as a snatchback.

Doing a snatchback, so getting a car back from a client,

is the last resort for us.

As the name suggests, a snatchback

is where the rightful owners of the vehicle use a spare set of keys

to take it back, but doing so can be a risky business.

It was a rural location, out in the country, a nice house.

We went quite early in the morning,

which is probably the best time to go.

The interesting thing for our guys that turned up

was that there was a rather large Rottweiler, and it was all fenced off

so we couldn't actually gain access to the property,

but the Rottweiler certainly woke us up that time of the morning.

The guard dog may have added a bit of bite to proceedings,

but it didn't stop the team from reclaiming the Bentley.

This particular case went to court

because we could prove that it was a staged accident,

the guy that owned the Aston Martin

had breached the terms of his conditions, the contract,

so we needed to take him to court to recover our costs.

For his troubles,

the policyholder was ordered to repay costs totalling £50,000.

But cases like this are becoming increasingly common

and today the Asset Protection Unit are on their way

to carry out another snatchback.

It's early morning, and Ian and Tony are a long way from home.

They've been on the road for almost four hours,

but are now just minutes away from the location.

He's got no idea that we're coming to recover the vehicle today,

which is our weapon, if you like, the element of surprise.

They might be the rightful owners,

but snatching cars can still be a hazardous business.

My concern is to, at all costs, avoid confrontation.

-SATNAV:

-After first exit, go right.

You can never account for what might happen once you get there.

But an irate customer isn't the only thing the guys need to worry about.

In the past, it has happened that

although the client has obtained the vehicle fraudulently,

he will report it stolen,

and there have been incidents in the past where we've actually

been pulled up by the police

and they've thought that we've stolen the vehicle, when in actual fact

we're the lawful owners and we're just recovering our property.

To avoid any confusion today,

Ian and Tony have alerted the local police about what they are doing.

The vehicle should be up here somewhere.

We're just having to look and identify

if we can see any grey Vauxhall insignias.

They're closely parked together, aren't they?

Hope I can get it out if it's here.

There you are, this is it.

-That's it.

-Right. OK.

Having found the car, Ian has to act quickly. There is no room for error.

And now definitely isn't the time for stalling it.

ENGINE STARTS

The guys are safely away.

We've got the vehicle. It appears undamaged at the moment.

Ian and Tony pull into a garage to give the car a quick once-over

and check there isn't anything illegal on board.

No.

There's a lot of property in there, isn't there?

Apart from a load of junk on the back seat, the car appears to be OK.

Our priority now is to get the vehicle back to Birmingham as soon as possible.

We'll try and make contact with the client, just to let him know that we

have recovered the vehicle and we're sending his property back to him.

I'm sure it won't be the last one that we'll be doing,

but, yeah, a very successful mission.

Just two weeks after its inception,

IFED dealt with a case that would eventually highlight

the shocking depths that some fraudsters would sink to.

The initial report was of

a young woman called Emma Fisher

who was suspected of submitting fraudulent insurance claims.

DC Alex Cooley headed up the investigation.

We went up to Walsall and Emma Fisher was arrested

in relation to seven fake household contents insurance claims.

Time and time again, she was claiming for the same items.

But she told us at that stage

that the frauds were limited to a total of seven.

Even after two years of operations and 450 arrests,

head of IFED David Wood can still clearly remember

the sequence of events that surrounded Emma Fisher.

We hoped that encounter with the police

and with IFED would be

her one and only dealings with us.

We were sadly mistaken.

Three months later, IFED were dealing with a number of suspected

fraudulent claims when they noticed a familiar name on the case notes.

This time we could see the extent of her offending,

it was over a long period of time.

It was quite systematic and well thought out.

It was different to the offending we had seen before.

It was clear that IFED were dealing with a serial fraudster.

But what was disturbing

were the lengths that Emma Fisher was prepared to go to

in the hope of cashing in.

For starters, there were multiple claims on pet insurance policies,

some of which were for dogs that didn't even exist.

Emma Fisher was typically claiming

that she had purchased a new chihuahua

and that chihuahua had subsequently either been stolen

or it had gone astray.

She would substantiate that with e-mails

pretending to be a pet breeder,

to prove the original purchase of the dogs.

She was quite imaginative.

The claim was generally for the entire price of a replacement dog.

But IFED soon discovered that claiming an phantom pooches

was just the tip of the iceberg,

because when it came to Emma Fisher and fake claims,

no insurer was safe.

She moved into mobile phone insurance,

where she claimed that she was mugged and she'd lost her mobile phone.

She pretended that she had been defrauded on her bank account,

typically claiming that, again, she had been robbed,

and that her card had been misused.

She also got involved in a couple of more specialist lines of insurance,

including, for example, income protection insurance,

where she claimed she'd had a job, which was a lie,

and that she had subsequently been made unemployed

and she was claiming for an indemnity to cover her lost earnings.

Defrauding insurance companies for a bit of cash with phantom pets

and made-up muggings is one thing,

but IFED's investigation soon highlighted that Emma Fisher was

anything but an average fraudster.

In fact, she had even used false claims to bag herself a house

adapted for a disabled person.

That's right - a house.

In order to obtain the disabled-adapted house,

Emma Fisher sent an e-mail to the Housing Authority

pretending to be a doctor. The doctor had the fake name of Mr Ahmed.

Mr Ahmed, in this supposed e-mail,

was saying how Emma Fisher was suffering from terminal cancer

and needed use of a wheelchair

and in the same claim, Emma Fisher also pretended to be a social worker

and e-mailed claiming that

Emma Fisher had been the victim of domestic violence.

With no moral scruples, Emma Fisher even claimed she had cancer.

In fact, there were no depths that she wouldn't stoop to.

Not only did she get the disabled-adapted house under false

pretences, but within the first couple of weeks of her tenancy,

she made a false public liability claim against the housing group,

and what she did was, she pretended she had fallen over some debris

in the garden which she alleged had been left by the Housing Authority.

In fact, on that occasion,

she had taken an image of a bruised leg from Google and submitted it

as evidence of her own false injury.

And as part of that claim, Emma Fisher alleged that

she had suffered a miscarriage as a result of the fall,

which is extremely serious,

and, again, turned out to be totally untrue.

It became clear just how manipulative Emma Fisher was prepared to be.

It obviously meant that in my investigation,

I had to take everything she told me with a very large degree of caution.

To you and me, that's a very large pinch of salt.

After further investigation, IFED had quite a dossier on Emma Fisher,

and the findings were staggering, to say the least.

Our investigation revealed that over a period of almost four years,

Emma Fisher had submitted 65 fraudulent insurance claims.

Incredibly, during that time,

Emma Fisher only got away with £8,500.

But it was the incredible lies she told that made her case stand out.

In my two and a half years in charge of IFED,

this is the most despicable and shocking case I've come across

by some distance. We've not encountered this before,

that someone would pretend they've got a terminal illness,

would pretend they'd been the victim of domestic violence

or would pretend that they've actually had a miscarriage,

but Emma Fisher did each of those three things.

It was clear to me on listening

to the phone recordings of her deception,

and reading the various e-mails that she'd sent,

that she seemed to be fully immersed in the roles that she was assuming.

She was almost like a method actor.

I think she could be quite convincing.

But Emma Fisher had given her final performance.

In July 2012, she was arrested by IFED detectives

and charged with 22 counts of fraud.

When she appeared at Wolverhampton Crown Court,

she received a 22-month prison sentence.

I believe Emma Fisher's crime spree had developed almost into a habit,

and she effectively couldn't stop herself,

and it was one fraud after another fraud after another fraud.