Episode 10 Claimed and Shamed

Insurance fraud in the UK has hit epidemic levels.

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

That's almost £6 million a 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 around 14 fake claims every hour.

Armed with covert surveillance systems...

That's the subject out the vehicle.

..sophisticated data analysis techniques...

..and a number of highly skilled police units.

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 shameless con artist tries to trip up the council.

The point where he was found was approximately half a mile

from where the pothole was located.

The IFED team return to haunt a greedy Ghost Broker.

He's got all the equipment and the capabilities to commit

the type of fraud that we're investigating.

Think I'm going to need a bigger car!

And two conflicting accounts put an insurer on a collision course.

The driver of the other vehicle was claiming £15,000 for personal injury,

£12,500 for ongoing care

and £770 for a coat that was damaged.

A walk in the park can be anything but,

if you forget to look where you're going.

Slips, trips and falls account for over 50% of all accidents

in the UK, and cost the NHS a staggering £133 million a year.

This is exactly the sort of unfortunate accident

experienced by 27-year-old Marc Bower.

The claim presented by Marc Bower was, on the face of it,

a straightforward tripping claim that we deal with day-to-day.

He said that he'd fallen on a pothole

whilst returning home from a party.

The pothole-related tumble proved a painful experience

for Mr Marc Bower, who sustained a serious fractured ankle.

Backed up by his father, Richard, and friend, James Jones,

Bower wasted no time in putting in a claim against

the London Borough of Havering for the injury and loss of earnings.

The claim, once it was submitted,

was investigated by the local authority,

and, after making those enquiries,

liability for the accident was admitted and then efforts were made

to obtain a medical report so that the claim could be valued.

By now, the claim stood at a whopping £100,000.

Unfortunately for Mr Bower,

it was soon apparent that his account

was no more truthful than Pinocchio's.

Once the medical report was obtained,

it revealed that he had in fact been injured when he'd fallen from

a wall, rather than having tripped on a pothole, as he was alleging.

Unusually, Mr Bower decided that he would continue with his claim.

The arguments against these records was that there was confusion,

there were language difficulties when they were prepared, and,

simply, there had been mistakes. That was what he said.

Already smelling a rat, but hoping to find even more

conclusive evidence, the investigators had one more trick

up their sleeve against the fraudsters.

We then obtained the recording

of the 999 call that was made,

as it transpired, by Mr Bower's friend,

James Jones, on the evening of the accident.

RECORDING OF PHONE CALL:

Sorry, can I hear that again?

I thought he tripped in a pothole...

Right! Well, you've really put your foot in it there, mate.

But not in a pothole...

There was no mistake. Mr James Jones was quite clearly

heard speaking to Marc Bower at the same time,

asking him what had happened, and you could hear

both James Jones and Marc Bower confirming,

"I'd fallen from a wall."

Yet it wasn't just the phone call that proved damning.

A very useful piece of evidence in this case turned out to be

the evidence of the ambulance crew.

They were able to confirm where they'd parked their ambulance

and where they eventually found Mr Bower,

which was near a boating lake.

At this point, we could establish that the point where he was found

was approximately half a mile

from where the pothole was located.

And, funny enough, right by where he was found,

there was in fact a three-foot wall.

After a short period of negotiation with Mr Bower's solicitors,

the claim was discontinued

and he was required to pay the council's costs of that action.

But that wasn't the end of the story.

The council issued contempt of court proceedings

against all three individuals - Marc Bower, and his father, Richard,

as well as James Jones, who had backed up his story,

all having lied in their earlier statements.

Shortly before the trial of the contempt case, Marc Bower

and his friend, James Jones, conceded that they had

committed a fraud

and they laid themselves to the mercy of the court.

Richard Bower, however, said that he had no knowledge of the fraud

and it was nothing to do with him.

Therefore, we had to have a trial on the issue of the contempt

of Richard Bower alone.

He was an unimpressive witness

and the judge was critical of the way in which he gave his evidence,

suggesting that he gave an impression

that he was making it up as he was going along.

And, furthermore, the judge took the view, when giving judgment,

that Richard Bower was in fact the driving force behind the fraud.

At the Royal Courts of Justice, the three men were sentenced for

their greedy ploy to con Havering Council out of £100,000.

Initial claimant Marc Bower received a two-month prison sentence,

his father Richard Bower received a four-month prison sentence

and his friend, James Jones, was given one month behind bars.

I think a custodial sentence is justified in this kind of case,

because the money can be better spent elsewhere.

It could be spent on care for the elderly, education,

all sorts of other activities,

rather than paying off fraudulent claimants.

Still to come...

A fridge fraudster finds himself frozen out.

We decided to look at Mr Johnson's insurance history.

When we did that, we were frankly amazed...

And the latest black box technology plays detective

to help solve a mystery crash.

Significantly, at the time of him saying the collision had occurred,

the vehicle was two miles away in a totally different location.

In January 2012, the City of London police joined the fight

against insurance fraud by forming an elite squad known as IFED,

The Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.

I've had to combat of all sorts of insurance fraud across the board,

ranging from opportunistic jewellery thefts to crash for cash.

They've made over 550 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.

The message I'd give to people that are considering embarking

on insurance fraud is, just don't do it.

My team, day by day, are getting more sophisticated in tracking down

the people that want to try out this type of crime.

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

One of the department's major headaches

are bogus insurance sellers, known as Ghost Brokers.

The average car insurance premium is over £400,

but young motorists can expect to pay around three times this much,

which makes them a lucrative target for fake car insurance sellers.

Ghost broking is where an individual will pose

as a legitimate insurance broker.

In fact, they are not.

They will charge individuals a large amount of money

and then give fraudulent details to an insurance company to obtain

a premium which is far, far lower. They can make a lot of money for

insurance policies that are in fact useless.

These fraudsters pose as insurance middlemen who can cut costs,

and target drivers under 25 with insurance policies

a few hundred quid less than the genuine products.

The insurance policy either doesn't exist or is

based on a completely different set of details, making the policy

cheaper to buy, but totally invalid for the young driver.

Three years ago, First Central Insurance

found themselves the victim of a prolific fraudster,

and one man that knows the case all too well

is Glenn Marr, Director of Fraud.

At the end of 2011, we noticed some unusual transactions.

Insurance companies rate people on a number of factors.

That's how we determine whether we insure somebody

and how we set the premium for the risk.

On these particular cases,

there was a high number of years of No Claim Bonus, unusually high.

When we factored it all together,

all of it pointed to something being wrong.

A number of identical No Claim Discount letters,

claiming to be from another insurer, soon highlighted the fraud.

This particular Ghost Broker spent time and energy

in producing forged documents.

That shows that they understood the insurance process quite well,

were quite committed in the way they were committing the fraud.

One of our mechanisms for detecting fraud

is picking up forged documents,

so by way of producing the documents,

they actually opened the door for us to investigate even further.

The fake documents were the final piece of the jigsaw.

This Ghost Broker had given the game away,

and the case was referred to IFED in 2012.

This particular policy here was incepted,

here it says on the 24th September of last year,

and the person accepting that policy

has paid an initial amount of £345.29.

Now, the policy holder in this case

I have spoken to since his policy was incepted and he has informed me

that he has paid in excess of £1,000 to this particular suspect.

So, there we go, just on one policy, he's paid £345,

yet he's received in excess of £1,000 in cash from the policy holder.

So that just demonstrates exactly how much money he's making.

With the evidence stacked against him, Mark and the team

head north to visit 33-year-old Attique Khan.

IFED believe the insurance scam was being run from here until 2012.

We're going to go there today now and arrest him.

We're then going to hopefully conduct a search of the address.

And what I'm expecting to find, or what I'm looking for,

is computer equipment, mobile telephones and any documentation.

It's quite easy for these Ghost Brokers to set up.

All they really need is a laptop, computer, any access to the internet

and one or two e-mail addresses.

We're aware of insurance policies that have been incepted

through First Central Insurance.

There's four officers out, including myself, today.

Three will go to the front door and hope to secure entry at the front door.

However, one officer will go to the rear of the premises,

just in case our man decides to try and escape through the back door

and over some garden fences.

It's the next road up on the right.

Right, there's the address.

It's a dangerous job, as the police don't know

how the unsuspecting fraudster will react.

Right, are you ready, guys?

After donning stab vests, they go knocking.

Window?

CCTV.

-Morning.

-Morning, it's the police.

Can you come down and let us in, please?

Thank you.

Morning.

Detective Sergeant Mark Foster from the City of London Police.

-Are you Mr Khan?

-Yeah.

-Attique Khan?

-Yeah.

Mind if I come in for a second, please, mate? Thank you.

IFED have their man, but the cameras remain outside.

Obviously, we've gone in and we've arrested the suspect on suspicion

of fraud offences by false representation.

Initially, he was a little bit surprised.

I've obviously explained to him in a little bit of detail

what we are investigating

and he has basically indicated to me

that he is aware of the offences, he has knowledge.

That's all he's said at the moment.

Obviously, I'm not going to interview him at this time.

That will all be done on tape back at the police station.

With the search under way, it's not long before they strike gold.

Khan's computer and a couple of scanners have been seized,

which have the potential to knock up counterfeit documents

and to create bogus policies.

It just shows that he's got all of the equipment and the capabilities

to commit the type of fraud that we are investigating.

He can easily, sort of, scan documents and send on policies

and documentation relating to insurance companies

and motor insurance to his prospective customers.

I think I'm going to need a bigger car.

With the haul from the house looking good,

Mark and his team turn their attention to the car outside,

hoping for further incriminating evidence.

Under here is our sort of compartment in the boot,

which has got lots and lots of paperwork, correspondence,

a letter, there, from Swinton Insurance.

Large amounts of documents within that we've taken. All seized.

Right, I've got loads of documentation in the back, here.

I'm going to bag that up as one.

-I'll leave these three in the back seat for now.

-Leave them here.

Yeah? You've got enough room?

Get in your way.

As the evidence mounts up,

the officers make careful notes on everything they find.

Ultimately, we've found large amounts of insurance documentation,

Lots of letters from various different insurance companies

to various different individuals, names, addresses,

all around most trade policies, insurance, motor cover.

There's always that possibility,

and we do find it happens quite a lot,

where once we get a foot in the door and we start searching

and looking under things,

we find that it's a lot bigger than first thought.

After you. Just jump in that silver motor, all right?

With all the evidence gathered and a suspect arrested,

it's been a good day for the IFED team.

Right, just jump in behind the passenger seat, please. All right.

Two years later, and IFED now had a clear case against Mr Khan,

who soon found himself in the dock at the Old Bailey.

After some extensive enquiries and a long investigation,

Mr Khan was charged with a number of counts of fraud and forgery.

The evidence against Mr Khan was so damning

that he had no alternative but to plead guilty at court.

He was given a 12 month term of imprisonment.

Historically, ghost broking has been looked upon by fraudsters

as an easy way to make money.

My message is, to those individuals,

that IFED are investigating ghost brokers

and will be looking to get the largest penalties at court

for those offences.

With congestion on Britain's roads getting worse,

there's more chance than ever of finding yourself in a jam.

However boring sitting in slow traffic may be,

you owe it to yourself to keep an eye on the car in front.

The claim was notified to us by our customer as a minor collision.

He was driving home from the library one January morning.

He told us that he had been travelling very slowly.

There were roadworks at the time with the traffic light control,

so it was stop-start, stop-start, stop-start,

heavy congestion going forwards,

and that he had just tapped into the vehicle in front of him.

This sounds like the sort of run-of-the-mill mishap

that happens on our roads every day.

So you can imagine their surprise when a claim arrived

from the very motorist they bumped at very low speed.

The driver of the other vehicle, a lady aged 50,

was claiming £15,000 for personal injury,

£12,500 for ongoing care,

and £770 for a coat that was damaged.

We became suspicious, because the circumstances described to us

by our customer did not match up in any way, shape or form

with what the claimant was alleging had happened.

Now faced with two conflicting accounts of the same incident,

the insurers began the search for the truth.

The police report identified a witness who had seen the collision,

and we subsequently spoke to him and he was happy to give us a statement

as to what he had seen at the time.

He was a foreman on the roadworks where the accident occurred.

He described the accident as happening at a very low speed.

He said slower than a slow walk.

He said the damage to both vehicles was extremely minor

and that the claimant's behaviour on the day was very strange.

She made a complete song and dance of the incident,

was clutching her neck, demanded that an ambulance be rung,

and that she be put on a stretcher to leave the scene.

Her behaviour at the scene was described as being claim-orientated,

as if she was trying to set herself up

for a substantial personal injury claim later.

The woman's story sounded pretty fishy.

As she was still keen to pursue the claim,

it would be up to the courts to decide.

The case was listed for a court hearing,

but the claimant failed to show up on the day.

The case was, therefore, dismissed by the judge,

who awarded us costs in the sum of £9,000.

These have now been fully recovered.

Whiplash claims are a fraudster's utopia.

They can claim for thousands of pounds in personal injuries,

but the problem is, the symptoms are often subjective.

Christian Worsfold is a physiotherapist

who advises the government as they look to clamp down

on this compensation culture.

My role at the Ministry of Justice advising the government

relates to improving the medical evidence that's collected

following a whiplash injury

and, also, improving the training and accreditation of the medical experts

who carry out the examinations following whiplash injury.

Accidents are down and cars are now safer,

yet road collision personal injury claims

have increased 60% since 2006.

The government believes over half a million whip-cash claims

are excessive, and, last year, passed a new law

to tackle the issues.

I think the medical examination can be improved because,

in my experience, I have a lot of patients come back

following these medical examinations

to tell me that they weren't in there very long,

perhaps they didn't remove their clothing,

they weren't examined in very much depth,

and patients will sometimes comment that they're not surprised

that it's actually easy to fake a whiplash injury.

Insurers estimate the claims currently add £90

to an average motor insurance policy.

By improving diagnosis and making challenging cases easier,

the government hopes the UK will lose its unenviable title

of The Whiplash Capital of Europe and cut costs.

When the washing machine blows up or the kids break the telly,

buying a replacement is yet another cost you can do without.

To protect against these minor home emergencies,

over 75% of households in the UK now have contents insurance.

Mr Johnson took out a policy with us in 2012

and, within two days of taking out the policy with us,

he made a claim for a fridge freezer

which he said was damaged when he moved house.

As the claim was made just two days after the policy was taken out,

the insurers were immediately suspicious,

and they decided to probe a little further.

We decided to just look at Mr Johnson's insurance history

and, when we did that, we were, frankly, amazed

at the amount of previous claims that he had made,

which he had failed to disclose to us

when he took the policy out with us.

It turned out that Mr Johnson hadn't just begun

with a single fridge freezer.

We found out that Mr Johnson had actually made claims

with a variety of other insurers for three fridge freezers,

two televisions and other equipment,

which you are under an obligation to declare to an insurer

when you take out a policy.

He hadn't declared any of those to us.

They were clearly dealing with a serial claimer,

so the case was escalated to IFED.

Mr Johnson had been frozen out.

Whilst this was a relatively small claim,

the fact that he had failed to disclose

so many previous claims,

and the level of nondisclosure,

we decided to report Mr Johnson's case

to the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.

Mr Johnson was arrested

and soon appeared at the City of London Magistrates' Court.

He was found guilty and ordered to complete 40 hours community service

and pay the £510 in court costs.

I think the lesson here for Mr Johnson,

and anybody else who might be tempted to act like him,

is that insurers do share information in order to detect fraud.

There are databases which insurers can search,

and these include, now, the new Insurance Fraud Register,

where those people who are proven fraudsters

will be filed to the Insurance Fraud Register

and that will be available for all insurers to look up in the future.

With a record 29 million cars now on Britain's roads,

that's a huge amount of motor insurance needed

and a lot of potential accidents around every corner.

The main business of Accident Exchange

is to provide hire vehicles

for people involved in non-fault accidents,

so if you're involved in an accident

and it's not your fault,

Accident Exchange can provide you with a like-for-like replacement car.

We have about 3,000 vehicles,

probably about £50 million worth of cars.

With having a fleet of over 3,000 vehicles,

it's inevitable that some of our vehicles are involved in accidents.

Unfortunately for Neil and his team,

some of these accidents aren't always what they seem.

What we found out is, because some clients use a hire car

which is covered on corporate insurance,

then maybe they think they won't be investigated.

They are investigated.

Incredibly, Neil's cars are fitted

with the equivalent of an aeroplane's black box recorder,

and these telematics devices help investigators determine

what happened to a car.

Telematics is new technology that's fitted to some vehicles,

not every vehicle, that will give us an immense amount of data.

Most telematics devices now can tell us the location of the vehicle,

the speed, the direction of travel, how it's being driven.

It's one piece of the jigsaw

in relation to an accident investigation.

Martin Bramwell is managing director of a telematics company

working alongside APU, and is the go-to tech guy

who can explain the science behind the data.

The black box in this vehicle, or telematics unit, if you like,

is collecting data all of the time.

Approximately every one minute,

we will collect the location and direction of travel of the vehicle,

but it will also collect driving behaviours

that are considered abnormal as soon as they occur.

Fast accelerations greater than something around 0-60 in ten seconds

are recorded as a harsh acceleration event.

We can also detect harsh swerving.

So, for instance, going around roundabouts or corners

in too hard a manner will also register as a bad driving behaviour.

The computer system at HQ has been receiving communications

from the car's black box device.

Now, back at the office, Martin analyses the data.

This is the start of the journey, clearly marked.

Each one of these blue dot indicates the location and the date and time,

together with its direction of travel.

Occasionally, we will see these harsh braking event markers

which, in this case, have occurred just as the vehicle

has been approaching some junctions.

It's exactly this kind of electronic information that proved

worth its weight in gold to the accident investigations team.

Whenever there's a claim, what we will do is investigate it

to the best of our ability,

using all the tools we have available to us.

There was a claim that came to my attention where a client

had said that, whilst on hire,

he had had a collision in the vehicle.

Probably a low speed collision,

nothing significant that was going to cause a lot of damage to the vehicle.

In a side road, so no CCTV opportunities,

no independent witnesses, just a quiet road on a residential estate.

There were three personal injury claims in the other vehicle.

The value of this claim was around about £20,000. A lot of money.

With a lack of supporting evidence and no footage of the incident,

it was hard to tell whether either party was telling the truth.

Luckily for APU, technology became the expert witness.

We looked at the telematics device and, significantly,

at the time of him saying that a collision had occurred,

the vehicle was two miles away in a totally different location.

With this collision, we can say that it never actually occurred.

From that, the personal injury claims were withdrawn.

It was now becoming increasingly obvious

that both the claimant and the driver weren't being honest.

There were significant similarities between the client's case

and the third party's case which tended to suggest, for me,

with hindsight, that they had perhaps collaborated

in relation to making this claim up

with a view to trying to get a personal injury claim forward

that wasn't going to be challenged, because it's a big hire company,

no-one's going to investigate it, and they were wrong.