Episode 8 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 is adding over £50 to your insurance bill.

But insurers are fighting back,

exposing 15 fake claims every hour.

Armed with covert surveillance systems...

That is the subject out of 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.

-Don't lie to us.

All those con men, scammers and cheats on the fiddle are now

caught in the act

on Claimed And Shamed.

Coming up.

Motorists find their insurance policies aren't worth the paper

they're written on.

I felt sick to my stomach at what could have happened, of the ifs

and buts of - had he had an accident, what would have happened?

The IFED team makes an unexpected discovery.

On searching one of the upstairs bedrooms

in the airing cupboard there were five

cannabis plants being grown.

Even though it was a small set-up, it's a professional one.

And a dodgy life insurance claim kicks the bucket.

If you're planning to fake your own death, don't bother.

Car insurance costs for young people have hit an all-time high,

with policies that are far more expensive than the cars they cover.

It's no surprise, then,

that many young drivers feel they are being priced off the roads.

That's where this man, Daniel Bukhari, sped to the rescue.

He ran several websites that specialised in affordable

insurance for young drivers.

Young drivers like Ashley Whittaker, who needed to watch every penny.

My son, Ashley, he was on an apprenticeship - £2.50 an hour.

He decided he wanted to buy a car, so saved up his own money,

bought his own car - a little Peugeot 1.1,

which was the cheapest thing on insurance.

With many years' experience of buying motor insurance,

Ashley's dad, Nick, offered to shop around on his son's behalf.

It wasn't long before he came across Aston Midshires,

one of Daniel Bukhari's sites.

Aston Midshires, it was there for young drivers,

people who wanted to get on the insurance ladder.

I think I spoke to the company three or four times,

and three or four different people answered the telephone.

It seemed like Nick had found a great deal for his son,

and Ashley went ahead with the policy.

It was £500 cheaper, but it was still £2,800 and something.

Paid a lump sum upfront direct from his bank, of about £1,200

and then he started paying £118 a month from his bank account.

Thinking they were on to a good deal, Nick

and Ashley even began recommending Aston Midshires to friends.

The point where we became suspicious of the company was in January

following the September when he took the insurance out.

My son got a phone call from a friend of his who wanted to

insure his car because he had passed his test.

He'd given them the landline number

and it was just ringing and ringing,

and at that stage, I started to think

maybe there is something not right with this.

Nick investigated further and discovered that

Ashley's insurance was totally worthless.

As soon as we found out, we went straight to the bank

to stop all standing orders going to this company.

They didn't know it then, but Ashley had been

the victim of the biggest ghost-broking fraud in the UK.

Ghost brokers are fraudsters who pose as agents to con people into

buying insurance policies that don't exist, let alone provide any cover.

Daniel Bukhari took ghost broking to the next level,

setting up multiple websites and companies.

DC Patrick Einsmann, from the City of London Police's IFED,

specialises in busting ghost-broking gangs.

He has seen first-hand how they operate.

You can be given the paperwork, you can

speak to people in virtual offices and ultimately you will be paying

for nothing and you will be left with just a hole in your pocket.

But nothing prepared him for the scale

and complexity of Bukhari's fraud.

The Aston Midshires scam had been going since September 2011.

It had been up and running three months by the time it got

to my desk.

Little did I know I was going to spend two years dedicated to it.

Pat checked out the site and, just like Nick,

found nothing immediately suspicious about it.

It was a very authentic website on day one when I looked.

It had the reviews from members of the public.

It had an FCA licence number.

It had everything you would need to obtain a quote.

It even had a link to a virtual office, where you could call

the number and you would speak to professional-sounding people.

That's the main thing, if you speak to someone who sounds very

professional on the phone, you know, very professional, slick operation.

You're not necessarily going to be wary.

Everything seemed legitimate,

even down to the high prices,

which were only slightly less than the real policies.

Once Pat realised the extent of the scam,

he moved quickly to protect the huge number of people at risk.

There were over 500 to 600 victims.

We had to put a national alert out straightaway, just to make sure

people weren't driving on the roads without insurance.

The vast numbers involved meant Pat had uncovered the UK's largest

ghost-broking scam.

He now set his sights on the man behind it.

It took a long time to get Daniel Bukhari.

He was very good at covering his tracks.

A lot of phone numbers, vehicles.

When you get one lucky breakthrough in a case -

we found a vehicle that was linked to him, tracked him down to

the address in south-west London, and to finally arrest someone

that you've been looking for over a year, it's a great feeling.

When IFED raided the property,

they found themselves in the middle of a virtual fraud factory.

As we walked through the door,

there were people making payments to him over the phone.

They even had office noise in the background on an iPod,

so that when he was speaking to customers, it would

appear that he was working in a busy insurance environment.

He knew why I was there. The game was up.

As a result of the raid,

IFED collected enough evidence to charge Bukhari.

The case was brought to court and justice was served.

Daniel Bukhari was a career criminal,

so he knows the risks he takes when he commits his offences.

He had his lifestyle, he spent victims' money in casinos,

fast cars, lavish lifestyle.

His callous scam was hugely lucrative.

I think within a week of it being up and running,

he had made £40,000 or £45,000,

and that was only in a week.

In all, he was thought to have scammed £550,000

from the young people he targeted.

For that, he was sentenced to 4½ years.

Meanwhile, his victims were left with nothing.

Their hard-earned cash was gone for good.

We've not been able to reclaim one penny of the money.

Daniel Bukhari heartlessly stole from the people who could least afford it.

But what's worse for the victims

and their families is the thought of what could have gone wrong.

I felt sick to the stomach of what could have happened,

of the ifs and buts of, had he had an accident, what would have happened?

The police and the insurance industry are determined

to scare off ghost-broking fraudsters.

Linsey White of the Association of British Insurers has some

advice for anyone who is concerned.

There are a number of things that someone can do

if they think they have been affected by a ghost broker.

They can always check with the Motor Insurance Database, which is

a list of the UK's registered,

valid and genuine insurance policies.

The Motor Insurer's Database allows car owners to enter

their registration number free of charge to check

whether their car is listed as being insured.

Drivers can also protect themselves by being on the alert

for ghost-broking giveaways.

They tend to use personal mobile phones

on any internet advertisements. They also tend to ask people

to pay up front or in monthly instalments over the internet.

In addition, all insurers should be registered

with the Financial Services Authority.

The insurance industry is determined

to bring ruthless ghost brokers to justice.

We take this very seriously, and anyone out there,

any ghost brokers who think they can get away with this, think again.

Still to come.

A woman who faked her death is discovered alive and well.

She's not dead. She was living in Hornchurch!

And a van driver finds out why you shouldn't mess with a double-decker.

Why take the chance? Buses weigh 15 tonnes.

If they hit you, you're going to know about it.

The Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department,

or IFED for a short, is an insurance scammer's worst nightmare.

IFED is a dedicated team that deals with insurance fraud.

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

There is a dedicated 40-strong unit

that work 24/7 hunting down insurance fraudsters.

The team was 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 that's in insurance, then it may well

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

Police! Don't move, stay where you are!

Today, DI Dominic Parkin is on the trail of suspects believed

to be connected to a potentially fraudulent road traffic accident.

We think this particular accident is a staged accident in

a cash for crash type of fraud or scam.

IFED believes that both parties knew each other

and deliberately staged the accident in order to claim insurance pay-outs.

With several passengers claiming for personal injury

as well as damage to the vehicles,

it was estimated that the claim could run into tens of thousands of pounds.

What the insurance companies did spot is the commercial

vehicle was fitted with something called Telematics

and this is the vehicle fleet equivalent of a black box

that's fitted in aircraft

and it showed that the commercial van, immediately prior to the

accident, was circling around the area stopping and starting.

For the raid, Dominic and his IFED team

have been joined by police officers from the local force.

They're on their way to arrest two of the suspects

and collect potential evidence.

We're going to search the houses.

I'm looking for evidence of them communicating with each other.

The operation involves a double raid,

but Dominic is focusing on the two main suspects.

The team arrive at the property.

It's important for them to remain unseen

until they move in to carry out the raid.

We've parked our vehicles out of sight

and we're going to see what happens.

The IFED team approaches the house.

It's early in the morning, so the suspects should be at home.

Police. Do you want to open up? Cheers.

It looks like she was just woken up.

At last, they gain access, but the film crew stay outside the property.

Morning. City of London Police, Insurance Fraud Unit.

-Can we come in?

-The what?

Insurance Fraud Unit. I need to speak to you.

Who else is in the house, please?

We've had a report from an insurance company

that there's been a fraudulent claim made on a motor insurance

policy involving your car. It's the accident that happened outside here.

OK? So that's why we're here.

You can give us all the explanation at the station if you wish to.

Turning up early has paid off.

Good news. Both people are in the house that we're after.

We've woken her up. She was actually asleep in bed

so she was surprised to see us and

she's just getting dressed so that she can come back to the station.

The IFED team begins the search

for potential phone and paperwork evidence,

but they soon discover rather more than they bargained for.

-Can I have a look at the airing cupboard?

-Yeah, go for it.

-Was that in there?

-Yeah.

-How many?

-Five up there in the airing cupboard.

When we first went in this house,

we noticed there was quite a strong smell of cannabis.

What I thought initially was, it may have been the evening before,

they'd had a joint, but on searching one of the upstairs

bedrooms, there's an airing cupboard,

and in the airing cupboard there's five cannabis plants being grown.

And even though it's a small set-up, it's a professional one.

I've got some pictures here. As you can see, the cannabis plants being

grown, there's five there. To get rid of the smell, there's

quite a good filtration system here and there's the heat lamp above

and just here you can see the extractor pipe,

which takes the strong odour out of the house.

That's often the case,

you will go to find or to arrest for one thing

and you discover another, but recently we are finding these

cannabis cultivation set-ups more commonly.

Cannabis plants like these can be worth a small fortune.

We've also found a biscuit tin. In there there are small

bags of cannabis and about 50 self-seal plastic bags

to put small amounts of cannabis in.

We're now going to dismantle this cultivation set-up

and also take the plants away to be examined,

to prove that the plants are cannabis.

And that's another matter that they've been arrested for

and will be questioned about later this morning.

The local officers are going to deal with the drug offences,

and the IFED officers will continue

with the insurance fraud investigation.

The search continues

and it's not long before Dominic finds potential evidence.

Mobile phones have been found and seized.

These will need testing to check exactly which numbers relate

to those handsets.

The results of the test could show

whether the mobile numbers match those of the drivers involved.

One of the suspects is led out from the property and is taken

to a local police station for questioning.

Meanwhile, there's good news from the other location.

The other team, they've also had success.

They have arrested their man, the van driver, as well.

During their search, they got his phone, which will be of similar

interest as it will be to this search and seizure here.

So, all in all, we've got everybody that we came out to find.

We've got all the evidence that we came to seek.

We've also dismantled this cannabis cultivation as well.

Most insurance crime is opportunistic,

but some frauds are really grave - fake deaths, for example.

Life insurance fraud can potentially net several million pounds,

which makes it very attractive to criminals.

Fortunately, this man, John Saunders, has spent a lifetime

investigating fake deaths and knows how to spot one immediately.

His 25 years of experience came in handy when, in 2002,

he was asked to investigate the UK's most famous case of a missing person.

'John Darwin went missing after setting out on a canoeing trip.

'No trace of him was ever found.'

At the time, the story gripped the nation

and five years later, it made the headlines again,

when John Darwin sensationally returned from the dead.

'This is where John Darwin reappeared yesterday,

'400 miles away in London.

'He has told police he doesn't remember anything about what

'happened, so for now, at least,

'his dramatic disappearance remains a mystery.'

Except there was no mystery.

John Darwin's disappearance was a simple case of life insurance fraud

and John Saunders had been on to him for some time.

I investigated at the time, and interviewed his wife,

and put forward that this, in our opinion, wasn't a legitimate claim.

When Darwin actually gave himself up,

we actually were aware, at that time, that he was in Panama and were

contemplating actually going to Panama and getting the money back.

John employs Mike, a former police officer,

to work on investigations with him.

I have grave concerns about what the husband has told me.

With their expertise, Linden Claims is the go-to company for insurers

wishing to investigate life insurance claims featuring deaths abroad.

John knows the incredible lengths people will go to

to cash-in from beyond the grave.

He banged on the door for ages,

and eventually this voice shouted out, "Go away, I'm dead."

And I can remember a case in West Africa of Edward,

who was allegedly dead and I found his car

and people said, "He was in that house there,

"he'll be out in a moment," and he came out. I said,

"Hello, Edward, how are you?" And he said, "I'm dead." I said,

"You're what?" "I'm dead. Sorry, I'm not dead.

"My brother is dead, I'm alive." And he then ran away.

In Mike's experience, there's no typical life insurance fraudster.

I don't believe that this is purely a white-collar crime

in my experience. This reaches across the social spectrum.

I've had instances of people in poverty making applications,

teachers making applications, and indeed businessmen.

But there is one thing all the fraudulent claimants have in common.

Money, they say, is the root of all evil.

And it certainly opened my eyes to it,

since I have been working for John.

In terms of that it is greed that actually pushes

the people into making these claims.

They see it as a way of setting themselves up, I'm sure, for life.

It's not surprising that, with his line of work,

John takes a dim view of those who submit phony life insurance claims.

Death comes to us all, eventually, and to try and fake death,

to me, seems morally wrong.

Recently, John was asked to look at the case of a woman called

Shamshad Billa who had taken out three life insurance policies

worth a total of £2 million.

Shortly after, Ms Billa had travelled to Pakistan on holiday.

After just a week, she had died, apparently of dehydration.

With three policies, £2 million of cover

and a suspicious death, John was called in.

The case came to us to, basically, to make a few background enquiries,

to interview the claimant and ascertain all the facts,

with a view to determining whether the claim was genuine or not.

The beneficiary of the policies was Mohammed Ali Butt,

Shamshad Billa's fiance.

If the claim was genuine, he stood to gain a cool £2 million.

The relationship between the deceased woman

and her fiance was the key to the case.

And that's where John focused his attention.

The deceased lady, Shamshad Billa,

was said to be a partner in an off-licence

and she wanted to leave the policy in trust for her fiance,

Mohammed Ali Butt, who was her partner in the off-licence,

but he apparently wasn't to know and it did seem a bit strange.

John decided to take a closer look at the off-licence

and ran a check to see who officially owned it.

It was in the name of Shamshad Billa and Mohammed Ali Butt

and I traced their address to actually...in Ilford

and, according to the neighbours there, they had moved

and Mohammed Ali Butt had an off-licence with his wife,

who was called Rozeena Butt.

It didn't add up. John's investigation had revealed

that the beneficiary was married to someone else.

Mohammed Ali Butt was due to receive £2 million

from Shamshad Billa, who had died in Pakistan,

but he was married to Rozeena Butt, who was very much alive.

John then turned to the wife, Rozeena Butt.

He soon made a discovery that potentially left the claim

dead in the water.

Mohammed Ali Butt's wife Rozeena also used the name Shamshad Billa

and worked at the off-licence with him.

It was too much of a coincidence.

John was convinced that Mrs Butt and Ms Billa

were one and the same person.

But it was vital to back up his suspicions with hard facts.

I managed to get the original birth certificate,

and was able to establish that she was born Shamshad Billa

and her name was changed to Rozeena Billa when she was a young child,

later became Butt when she married Mr Butt.

The Butts had used Rozeena's old identity to take out

multiple life insurance policies.

They had then claimed that Shamshad Billa had died in Pakistan

and had attempted to fraudulently claim a massive pay-out.

So she's not dead, she was living in Hornchurch

and still running the off-licence under the name Rozeena Butt,

but she was also Shamshad Billa.

By this stage, John had enough evidence of suspected criminal

activity to report back to the three insurance companies,

who then contacted the authorities.

DCI Manley of the City of London Police worked on the case.

In his eyes, the two identities were pivotal to the fraud.

At the time, Shamshad had two passports -

one in her old identity that was legal and one in her new identity.

The second passport came into play after Shamshad Billa

had supposedly died.

She has got to get back from Pakistan and she has used her new

identity and her new passport to

travel back to the UK, showing a high degree of planning

in - how is she going to get out there? How is she going to get back?

With so much evidence,

the police moved in to arrest the main suspects,

Mohammed Ali Butt and Rozeena Butt,

but even then, there was a surprise in store.

When we executed warrants, the wife Rozeena was upstairs

and the door was answered by a man in police uniform.

And between committing the fraud and working in the off-licence

he had applied for and was joining the police force

and was in police uniform on his way to work,

maybe not realising the implications of what had happened

and what fraud had been committed.

In an audacious move, Mohammed Ali Butt had actually joined the police,

the very organisation that, unbeknownst to him,

was about to bring him down.

But before the case could progress, DCI Manley needed a motive.

When we were investigating, we find that she has got quite a nice house,

but she is in a lot of debt, she's struggling to pay the mortgage.

While she had a nice lifestyle, she was struggling to maintain it.

So, it looks to me as though the motive is

to maintain a lifestyle.

By the time the case reached Southwark Crown Court,

the evidence was compelling, especially the death certificate from Pakistan.

We forensically examined it and you've got Mohammed Butt

and Rozeena Butt, her fingerprints are on the document.

So the lady whose death has been faked

has got her fingerprints on the document.

Not an easy thing to do if you're dead.

The butt of the joke was that they were now worse off than

when they started.

Muhammad Ali Butt and Rozeena Butt

had tried to claim £2 million in life insurance, but failed

and collectively were locked up for three years, seven months.

I've got no sympathy for them at all.

I think they underestimated how far the insurance company would

take it and also I don't believe they ever thought

the police force would take it up to investigate.

Instead of enjoying a life of luxury,

the couple ended up living behind bars.

Hardly what you call seventh heaven.

DCI Manley has some words of warning

for anyone else thinking of doing the same.

If you're planning to fake your own death, don't bother.

With 5.1 billion bus passenger journeys taken every year,

statistically there are going to be road accidents.

Lee Ingram of First Group knows this only too well.

It's quite common that we get accidents at junctions.

It's also quite common where one person gives one version

of events, and someone else has got a completely different version.

And that's just what happened in this case.

This is a case involving a vehicle pulling out of a junction

in front of an oncoming bus.

The van driver is saying that he's pulled out from the junction,

got virtually all the way across and had to stop because of traffic.

He stopped, he's alleging our bus is speeding and has not been able

to stop in time which he should have done and hit him in the rear.

Lee talked to the bus driver to get his side of the story.

Our bus driver is simply saying that the vehicle has

pulled out as soon as it's upon him,

and left him no chance to avoid hitting him.

This immediately called the van driver's claim into question.

Lee's suspicions were also aroused by the sheer size of the claim.

The gentleman was claiming for whiplash injuries to himself

and also injuries to three passengers in the vehicle as well.

So we are looking at a claim

round about the £20,000 mark including legal costs.

A huge amount of money was at stake,

but luckily First Group buses

are fitted with state-of-the-art technology,

which monitors everything.

Our buses are effectively data-gathering machines.

We've got CCTV evidence, we've got telematics evidence.

We know where a bus is at any time, what speed it's doing,

and we're also taking images of everything around and on the bus.

Checking out the CCTV was a no-brainer.

It would settle the question of what happened once and for all.

From the version of events given by the other party,

we were expecting him to casually pull out of the junction,

get virtually all the way across and then have to come

to a slow stop, and then the bus coming along shortly after,

and then hitting his stationary vehicle. When we've

actually looked at the footage, this is not what's occurred.

He's pulled out quite quickly from the junction,

across the bus who is almost upon him,

and just got past the front off-side of the bus

when it's collided with the rear of his van.

This goes completely against what

the claimant was actually saying had happened.

The CCTV proved the claimant hadn't been telling

the truth about the accident.

I don't think this gentleman is actually trying to pull

out in front of an oncoming bus, I think what he has done is

he has misread the distance between himself and the bus.

He's gone for it, to all intents and purposes, and just tried to get

across the road before the bus got there and failed spectacularly.

Why take the chance? Buses weigh 15 tonnes.

If they hit you, you're going to know about it.

Not only did the claimant cause an accident by dangerous driving,

he tried to blame someone else and sting them for a pay-out.

He's then decided, "Well, I'm going to try and make a claim.

"I'll put in a version of circumstances which I think is

"correct, and we'll go for it and see how much we can get out of it."

Needless to say, the claim was rejected,

all thanks to the on-board technology.

For anyone who is thinking of trying to put in a fraudulent claim

or an exaggerated claim, as soon as that comes in to us,

you're likely to receive a copy of the CCTV footage proving

otherwise. So, yeah,

if you're thinking about making something up, I wouldn't bother.