Episode 8 Claimed and Shamed

Insurance fraud in the UK has hit epidemic levels.

It's costing us over £1.3 billion every year.

That's almost £3.6 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 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 conmen, scammers

and cheats on the fiddle are now caught in the act

and claimed and shamed.

Today, a serial fraudster lashes out when he's confronted...

..Ifed investigates a coachload

of questionable personal injury claimants...

Driver of the coach witnessed them running across the dual carriageway

and hurdling the central reservation. So, it would seem

that their injuries were not as they had claimed.

..and a claim is put on hold

when insurers track down two phones that were supposedly lost.

We identified that the exact same claimant was advertising

the exact same phones on an online marketplace site.

Insurers are fighting fraudsters on every front.

Some of the most effective weapons in their arsenal

are specialist consultants,

like Tara Shelton of I-cog.

Prior to starting up the business, I was a police officer for 15 years.

Prior to that, and during that period, also studied psychology.

And within the specialism of the police I was a hostage negotiator.

Drawing on her unique background,

she uses techniques that identify fraud more swiftly than normal.

We definitely do have the edge when it comes to the fight against fraud

by combining these unique skills.

With Tara on the case,

the net is closing in on those who seek to abuse the system.

I think it's quite common for those that are claiming fraudulently

to see insurers as easy prey.

And I think it's also important to note

that we are probably their worst nightmare.

One of Tara's most memorable cases

was when she was brought in to work on a claim from Sahardid Hussein.

He'd been robbed of gadgets, including a camera

and iPad, whilst on holiday.

Mr Hussein had made a claim that he was approached from behind

by a male while walking in a park in Croatia.

That the male had robbed him of all of his goods and then run off.

However, when the claim was actually presented, there was another policy

that he had claimed against six months previously

with exactly the same information.

But this was in London.

It was actually a member of staff in a small broker firm that spotted it,

just by chance. Just by chance.

What gave the game away was that the insurers concerned were both

underwritten by the same company

and that allowed the claims to be linked.

In Mr Hussein's mind, he was making two separate claims

through two different insurance companies when, in fact,

the common thread was it was underwritten by the same company.

And the method of both of his claims were exactly the same -

that he was approached by a male from behind

who had robbed him of all his goods.

The items he was claiming for were exactly the same.

The chance of that happening six months apart

in two different countries is exceptionally slim.

They suspected they had a fraudster on their hands

and Tara's expertise was called on.

The intelligence profiling highlighted a transient individual

who moved from place to place as a tenant.

Who was being pursued by debt collectors, who was taking out

a large number of insurance quotations

which didn't suit his lifestyle.

And who gave information to the insurers, such as an occupation type,

that we couldn't substantiate.

Tara had done her homework on Hussein

and her next move was to ring him.

The call was where she unleashed her battle plan.

RINGING TONE

The plan was always that the call would have two halves.

So, the first half would be

psychologically understanding Mr Hussein.

Psychologically being onside with Mr Hussein.

The second half of the call, which was just in a mature, adult fashion,

attempted to discuss the concerns that we had with the claim.

The way he answered my questions had no depth.

Mr Hussein failed dismally at satisfying me that he was there

at that place at that time.

Having achieved her first aim,

it was at this point that Tara switched to the second part

of her strategy and informed him of the concerns surrounding his claim.

He immediately became quite volatile, aggressive,

rude and, psychologically, was severely backed into a corner.

The real skill with implementing this is making the fraudster

think that they have control.

But they have control because I want them to think they have it.

I actually have control.

And, so, therefore, when it's flipped on its head,

it becomes evidently clear that they actually have been detected.

He did make several comments one was, which, "I have no fear,"

because he actually was in such denial at his addiction

of claiming fraudulently that he believed his own lies.

The aggressive sabotaging behaviour

might have worked on others but not Tara.

She kept up the pressure and eventually Hussein broke.

But even that was a lie.

Eventually, he admitted to 22 frauds with different insurers.

He'd travelled Europe with his con.

From Croatia...

..to Romania...

..to Madrid.

In my mind, I was of no doubt that he was just admitting

the bare minimum, based on the information I had.

But Mr Hussein wasn't prepared to go down without a fight.

And staged a last-ditch attempt to talk, or rather sob,

his way out of trouble.

Mr Hussein called me, crying, admitting that he had committed fraud

and, essentially, asking me for take mercy on him.

Did I believe him, that he was remorseful? No.

Did I believe that he'd only committed the offences

he admitted in that call?

No.

It was obvious to all that these were crocodile tears

and the file on Mr Hussein was passed to the police.

Tara's work was done.

Or so she thought.

I think with Mr Hussein being

so predatory it was a case that really stuck in my mind.

I just happened to be with a client a month or so later

and I just said, "Can you just check this name for me?"

And they said, "Oh, we've got three claims and he's just phoned up

"a minute ago screaming and shouting at us, asking where his money is."

With Tara listening in, the client called Mr Hussein back.

They just asked if my name meant anything to him.

The phone went completely silent and he hung up.

DIAL TONE

In my opinion, Mr Hussein has a severe addiction

to fraudulently claiming against insurers.

But Tara had stopped him in his tracks.

And, ultimately, his addiction landed him in jail.

The police had more than enough evidence

to mount a successful prosecution.

And he was sentenced to 13 months in the slammer.

Still to come - a personal injury claim falls over

when the claimants fail to get their story straight.

All three individuals were telling us different things.

One of them said that they were in a van at the time of the collision,

where it was clearly a car that was being claimed for.

And a caller uses bully-boy tactics to try and force through a claim.

In January 2012,

the police joined the fight against insurance fraud

by forming an elite squad known as Ifed,

the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.

Ifed deal with a wide variety of insurance fraud offences.

From serious crash for cash, to household fraudulent claims,

we are responsible for bringing insurance fraudsters to justice.

They've made over 660 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.

Insurance fraud isn't easy money, it has risks and consequences.

You could get a criminal conviction and you can go to jail.

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

One of the most common insurance frauds in the UK involves

faked whiplash injuries sustained in road traffic collisions.

Insurers and the police are now working together to put

the brakes on these types of claims.

Ifed's Detective Sgt Mark Forster investigated one such case

featuring a huge number of suspects.

The claim involved a coach crash

and 35 claimants from that coach, all who were claiming personal injury.

I believe the insurance company had a reserve on all of the claims

together at around £150,000.

According to the claimants, they were travelling by coach

to a dog track when they were rear-ended by a car...

..causing them serious whiplash-type injuries.

The car driver accepted responsibility

and the claims were made against his insurers.

They contacted the coach driver to get his side of the story.

And, almost immediately, alarm bells started to ring.

What concerned the driver was the fact that he didn't feel an impact

and that he was alerted by passengers sitting on the back-seat.

He was confused as to how they knew there had been an impact

when there was an advertisement on the back window

and you couldn't physically see out of the back of the coach.

It was almost as if they were expecting it

and knew it was going to happen.

It seemed strange that 35 people could have been badly injured

from an impact that he hadn't even felt.

And further doubts were raised by the behaviour of the claimants

immediately after the alleged collision.

All of the males decided that they wanted to go back to the pub

and didn't want to continue to the trip that they had

arranged at the local dog track.

Driver of the coach witnessed them all

running across a busy dual carriageway

and hurdling the central reservation to run back into that pub.

So, it would seem that their injuries were not as they had

claimed at the time.

The insurers strongly suspected that a large-scale fraud was being

attempted so they declined the claim and referred the case to Ifed.

An investigation was launched into the suspected ringleaders.

We looked at Ben Carberry, we knew he was responsible

for booking the dog track and also booking the coach on the night.

We looked at Liam Gray and we looked at Kevin Hamilton,

the driver of the other vehicle.

We could see there was a definite link between all three males.

They were ringing one another, texting one another,

one or two hours before the collision and afterwards, that evening.

Ifed was convinced that they were dealing with fraud

on an almost industrial scale.

Mark and his colleagues moved in to arrest Carberry and Gray,

starting at the property of a relative of Gray,

which they believed was his home address.

KNOCKING

Police! Come down.

-Is Liam here?

-Liam?

-No?

-Maybe.

It seemed that they had drawn a blank

but Ifed officers aren't easily discouraged.

At the end of the day, we need to speak to him.

We'll catch up with him sooner or later.

Basically, we've gone into the address,

all our checks showed that he was still living there.

She's saying he's not living there, he doesn't live there.

Still to come, Mark's persistence pays off

when he eventually finds one of the suspects

holed up in a toilet.

Does he often hide in your en-suite?

It must be a bit scary for you when you come in at night.

No-one enjoys being office bound,

so it makes a nice change to hold a meeting off-site.

Feeling chipper, a man insured with Assurant Solutions decided

to host a high-powered business meeting in a fast-food restaurant.

What happened next left a nasty taste in his mouth.

Andy Morris works for the insurers involved.

This particular claim, our agents received notification that

the claimant had lost

two mobile phones and a wallet.

With the loss of these phones worth almost £1,000,

it was far from being a happy meal

but his insurance policy meant he could put in a claim.

During the initial call,

he explained that both phones had gone missing from the same pocket.

Our agents are trained to treat customers fairly,

so, despite our concerns and our fraud triggers questioning

the size of the claimant's pocket, we processed the claim.

But if he thought he could pocket an easy pay-out, he was wrong.

Following standard procedure,

his previous insurance history was analysed.

In this case, the claimant had had two very recent,

successful claims for high-end smartphones.

That was one of the key triggers in this case.

It seemed that the businessman had something of an appetite for insurance claims.

Meanwhile,

he was trying to pressurise the company into a quick pay-out.

Assurant Solutions launched an investigation

to look into the circumstances of his claim more closely.

The claimant told us that they had gone to the restaurant manager

and asked if anybody had handed the phone in and they left their details.

Sounds reasonable, apart from the fact that it didn't happen.

When we checked and telephoned the restaurant,

there was no such evidence or no such record.

And further enquiries threw up more question marks.

During this time, we identified that the exact same claimant

was advertising the exact same phones on an online market place site.

This wasn't a case of crossed lines, these were, beyond doubt,

the two phones in question.

We identify each of the phones through a unique identification number

and we were able to prove that the two phones that were being

sold and advertised on the market place were the very two phones

that the claimant was claiming for that had disappeared from his pocket.

The insurers simply weren't prepared to swallow the story

that the phones had been lost.

So we contacted the customer when we identified that

he was attempting to sell the phones that he was claiming for.

Quite clearly, it is a serious indication of fraud at this time

and the claimant claimed that he was selling

the phones on behalf of his brother and immediately withdrew the claim.

In the face of the evidence against him, the businessman

realised that he had bitten off more than he could chew.

Whilst it is amusing that somebody is concocting a story

that goes beyond the realms of belief and possibility,

actually this costs the industry £2 billion a year.

People making fraudulent claims around smartphones

and devices is nearly £1 billion.

Come winter time, the bad weather makes our streets treacherous.

Around 6,000 road traffic collisions are thought to be caused by snow

and ice annually, making it a busy time of year for motor insurers.

Sarah Hill from insurance lawyers BLM dealt with a claim

from an icy accident.

This was a family affair claim.

This was a road traffic accident where a mother was driving

the vehicle, she was turning right, she lost control in the snow

and collided with the fence on the corner property.

She had two passengers,

her daughter and a cousin, in the vehicle at the time of the accident

and they both sustained injuries as a result of the impact with the fence.

Initially, given the weather conditions,

the circumstance of the accident looked very plausible indeed.

It wasn't until the statements started to come in from the driver

of the vehicle, mother, and from the other two passengers

that there were some clear inconsistencies in relation

to the circumstances surrounding the accident.

Anyone who has been in an accident knows how serious it is,

so you would expect all three accounts to be the same,

but in this case they couldn't even agree on the basics.

In particular, one of the passengers had said that the vehicle had hit a wall,

whereas the driver was saying that the vehicle had hit a fence.

This inconsistency made a big impact on the insurers

and they decided to put the claim on ice

while an investigator was appointed to take detailed statements.

Yet more discrepancies were revealed to the point

where serious doubts began to creep in.

All three individuals were telling us different things at different times.

One was saying that the accident took place at 6.30 in the morning.

Another was saying it was 7.30 in the morning.

One of them said they were in a van at the time of the collision

where it was clearly a car that was being claimed for.

Rule number one of trying to pull a fast-one on insurers,

get your story straight.

One of the individuals said that the vehicle had been driven from the scene.

We know that was not correct because the owner of the property

came out at 7am and found the abandoned vehicle in her property.

The passengers had vanished but, thinking on her feet,

the property owner videoed the scene and this was passed to the insurer.

The claims were already suspicious, even before the video footage

came in, but once that video footage had been seen it was quite clear

that this accident, whilst had happened, the claims

that were being presented by the two passengers clearly couldn't have been genuine.

There was only one set of footprints in the snow

leading away from the vehicle.

The claimant was then informed about the content of the video

and started to backtrack.

The driver couldn't give any explanation

for one set of footprints in the snow.

It's very hard to think there's a rational explanation for one set

of footprints unless, of course, we are suggesting that the driver

was carrying her daughter and her cousin on her back

from the scene of the accident.

Wonder woman this wasn't.

Instead, there was a much more likely reason for what had happened.

The inconsistencies in the evidence indicated

that this was a poor attempt by the claimants to cash in on injury claims for people

that were not present in the vehicle at the time of the accident.

In this particular case, when presented with the evidence

the individuals decided, quite rightly,

not to progress their claims.

The chances of a pay-out had totally melted away

and anyone thinking they could just walk away from this

type of claim is risking more than a frosty reception from insurers.

There is still a potential for those individuals

to be criminally prosecuted for just bringing

the claims in the first place because they were fabricated claims.

Previously, in Liverpool, Ifed's DS Mark Forster

was on the trail of Liam Gray and Ben Carberry -

two men suspected of masterminding a huge insurance scam

involving coach passengers claiming for injuries in an accident that never happened.

I believe the insurance company had a reserve on all of the claims

together at around £150,000.

Mark was being given the runaround.

All our checks showed that he was still living there.

She's saying he's not there, he doesn't live there.

Through various enquiries, we managed to identify

another address situated in the city centre of Liverpool.

This was where they hoped to find Ben Carberry.

Do you just live here on your own?

The Ifed team believed that Liam might be with him

and they immediately went to check out the flat.

Carberry was inside but there was no sign of Liam.

Where's Liam?

Is he in there?

No.

But he was there, hiding in an en-suite bathroom.

Right, you are being arrested.

Does he often hide in your en-suite, does he?

It must be a bit scary for you.

Have you got a mobile telephone? You'll get it back.

Having flushed out both suspects,

Mark started on the search for evidence,

particularly the phones used on the night of the collision.

He needed to categorically link the handsets to the suspects.

The team now moved on to the final part of the raid,

a search of Liam's actual home address. They didn't have to go far.

I'm just going down now to a flat in the same building,

which we know is a flat that is currently being occupied by Mr Gray.

Police! Hello.

With Liam under arrest upstairs,

they weren't expecting to find anyone else in the flat

but what they did find was more evidence in the form of driving documents.

This particular driving licence is in the name of a gentleman

who was driving the vehicle,

driving the car that hit the coach at the rear.

Though it was found in Liam Gray's flat, it belonged

to Kevin Hamilton and was the breakthrough the case needed -

the rock solid link between the two men.

It's nice for us because it shows the association between the gentleman

we have arrested today and the person who was driving the car.

This association strongly pointed to fraud.

There'd be no connection between the two parties in a genuine accident.

Hello. Hello, mate. Are you all right?

Yeah, we found a few nice bits and pieces

all sort of scattered on the bed so it looks like he has had a tip-off that we are coming

and he has rummaged through a load of stuff potentially

with a view of getting rid of it but he's not done too good a job by the look of it.

With the search completed,

the suspects were then taken to a local police station for interviews.

The raid had been a huge success

and eventually Mark's investigation moved to the endgame, court.

All three defendants, Liam Gray, Ben Carberry and Kevin Hamilton,

pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud

in relation to this coach crash.

All three defendants received

terms of imprisonment at Southwark Crown Court.

Liam Gray was sentenced to 14 months' imprisonment,

Ben Carberry 11 months

and Kevin Hamilton a four-month prison sentence.

These three defendants were all young men with their whole lives in front of them.

This one moment of stupidity in organising a fraud,

which was essentially for greed,

has potentially affected the rest of their lives.