Episode 2 Claimed and Shamed

Insurance fraud has reached epidemic levels in the UK.

It's costing us more than £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 around £50 to your insurance bill.

But insurers are fighting back, exposing just under 15 fake claims

every hour. Armed with covert surveillance systems...

Subject out of 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, undercover filming causes a £250,000

personal injury claim to fall down.

This is quite surprising footage, really.

It is, I suppose, shock value.

A bus claim stalls when CCTV reveals there was no accident.

We did wonder whether or not we'd pulled the right footage,

considering what she was claiming for. So we checked our disks

and, yes, it was the right one.

And a woman is caught planning her husband's murder by an

undercover police officer posing as a hit man.

Like a lot of people, I used to think

that insurance fraud only occurs when someone

completely fabricates a claim for something that never happened.

A flatscreen TV supposedly stolen in a break-in, for example.

It's a common misconception.

The penalties for exaggerating a claim that is otherwise

genuine are just as severe.

Building work poses all sorts of dangers

and, despite the hard hats and high-vis tabards,

accidents will happen.

Any responsible employer will have insurance cover to protect

their staff should the worst happen.

As in this case.

Mr Kittle was working for our policy holder

at a private property.

Rob Smith-Wright is the claims manager for insurers QBE.

He was in the process of ascending a ladder...

..when the ladder gave way underneath him.

As he fell, the ladder trapped his knee and actually he suffered

a fracture to both his tibia and fibula.

In other words, a double leg break.

So the injuries that Gary Kittle

would have suffered would have been quite debilitating.

He would have required open surgery,

he would have required a significant period of rehabilitation

before he could have been considered fit to work again.

As part of the claims process, he was examined by

a medical expert, who provided more detail about his condition.

He was severely restricted in what he was able to do,

he wasn't able to climb ladders.

He was claiming he was finding difficulty in walking up and

downstairs, being able to crawl,

undertake general household duties, so we were being painted

a picture of someone who was in a really serious state.

Since Mr Kittle's injuries were so significant,

the cost of the claim was rapidly expanding.

We would have been looking at compensation

in the region of £25,000.

As it stood, there was nothing unusual about the claim.

We had no reason to doubt the incident.

We had no reason to doubt the injury that he had suffered.

But what they did have reason to doubt was the extended length

of his recovery.

Our first suspicions arose around March 2009.

Mr Kittle had been released from rehabilitation treatment

and we had been advised in those medical records that he'd had

a full range of pain-free movement

and therefore he could return to work.

However, Mr Kittle alleged that his symptoms were continuing

and he didn't feel that he was able to return to work.

This was outside of the general range of the recovery period

expected for this kind of injury.

The upshot being that he required further compensation,

since he was still allegedly unable to earn a living.

Our next steps, really, were to discover whether or not

Mr Kittle was indeed as injured as he says he was.

With that in mind,

investigators carried out surveillance on the claimant.

The surveillance footage we would have expected to have seen

with regards to Mr Kittle would have been someone who wasn't as

mobile as he possibly could have been,

who was suffering

in pain and movement,

and generally would have been

unable to undertake even, you know,

the simplest of household duties.

But the filming shows

a different picture.

Kittle isn't exactly

keeping a low profile -

his bright-red jumper

sort of stands out.

The first footage that we obtained

showed the claimant working,

despite the fact that

we had been told that he had been signed off from work.

He was seen digging and he was seen

moving a wheelbarrow,

directly contradicting the general

capabilities that he says he can do.

So the initial reaction to

the first period of surveillance

was one of surprise.

To eliminate the possibility

that Kittle was just having

a good day, further surveillance

was carried out.

It showed Mr Kittle in a rather more precarious position,

which was up on a roof.

For a man who allegedly

had mobility issues,

stairs would have been a problem,

let alone a ladder.

He was working for a roofing company.

He could be seen both ascending

and descending ladders with ease.

He could be seen

moving quite large...

lifting heavy objects.

Generally, this was a picture of

someone who was far more

capable of work and far more capable of activities than

he was actually letting us know.

At this point, we were convinced

that Mr Kittle was grossly

exaggerating the symptoms

that he was suffering.

The surveillance continued and produced even more damning evidence.

What it actually showed was a further recovery period

for Mr Kittle.

Here we see him getting into what appears to be a work van

and driving off.

When he arrives at his destination,

it's apparent that he's not there on a social visit.

He's there to work -

carrying a bucket,

sweeping the patio,

moving a bench,

and even operating a backpack sprayer.

I mean, whatever he's doing here just takes the biscuit.

The footage shows that he'd dug himself into a bit of a hole.

This is quite surprising footage, really,

simply because of the level of restriction that Mr Kittle

was telling us that he had, so it is, I suppose, shock value.

By now, the level of evidence against Mr Kittle was overwhelming.

It was at this point that the case then began to unravel for Mr Kittle.

We then disclosed all the surveillance evidence that

we had gathered to the claimant's solicitors,

and we simply asked them the question,

"Was this Mr Kittle in the footage?"

They confirmed it was, and it was at that point, then,

that we decided that we would not be making any kind of offers.

He'd been caught out,

but, instead of walking away,

Mr Kittle tried to put QBE on the back foot, with a demand for costs.

The schedule that he served thereafter was in excess

of £250,000, and that wasn't including the injury

that he had suffered, as well -

this would have been special damages such as lost earnings,

future care and things like that.

-PHONE RINGS

-Our initial response to that wasn't

one of major surprise,

simply because we had already established that Mr Kittle

was exaggerating his symptoms.

So, it wasn't too much of a stretch for him to exaggerate

the cost of the claim.

Unfortunately for Mr Kittle, QBE weren't going to accept it.

At that point, we made a conscious decision that Mr Kittle's deceit

extended into criminal activity,

and we decided that we would take the route of a private prosecution.

It's an unusual step. It's not generally done.

However, the penalties are far more severe using a private prosecution.

The surveillance footage was central to their case.

It painted the picture of a man that was prepared to

lie to medical experts,

with regards to his conditions and what his true capabilities were.

We sent the surveillance footage to our medical expert,

and we asked him to comment upon that against the medical report

that he'd previously disclosed to us.

I think it was fair to say that his response to that was,

erm, quite damning.

As was the final verdict in the private prosecution.

He was summoned to attend Guildford Crown Court in May 2015,

and he pleaded guilty to two of the three charges

that were laid against him.

Mr Kittle was sentenced to an immediate custodial sentence of

12 months' imprisonment.

Mr Kittle now has ample time on his hands to reflect on

where he went wrong.

So, Mr Kittle, as far as we were concerned,

had suffered a genuine incident,

and had suffered a genuine injury.

Had he been true and honest,

and played the claim with a straight bat, there was every chance

that Mr Kittle would have walked away with some kind of compensation.

However, greed took over.

It's a simple fact that insurance fraud is a crime.

Exaggeration is insurance fraud and if you do commit it,

and we have the evidence against you,

we will pursue the claims to the fullest extent the law allows us to.

A wife plots to murder her husband

in cold blood for his life insurance.

There is nothing more annoying than losing your phone

while you're out and about.

We've all been there, and you wouldn't be alone -

more than 20,000 mobiles are misplaced on the capital's

public transport system every year.

It is, in fact, the number one item of lost property.

With top-of-the-range of handsets costing more than £500,

fraudsters have begun to target phone insurance,

but the industry is fighting back.

Andy Morris is the president and CEO of Assurant Solutions Europe.

So, this is an incredible case.

It started with one of our highly-skilled agents effectively

being concerned that some of the data didn't correlate.

The agent noticed a strange pattern emerging across

a large number of claims.

One of the anomalies that they found was that the location of the loss

of the phones was actually always on the London Underground.

It was enough for Assurant to take a closer look,

and to identify how many claims were suspicious.

Well, as it quickly escalated into over 60 cases,

and a cost to the industry

and to us of over £30,000.

It became clear that this was a significant, organised,

fraudulent activity.

At this point, Assurant liaised with the British Transport Police,

who have authority over the UK's rail networks,

including the London Underground.

DC Darren Griffiths took on the investigation.

He went through the phone recordings made when the losses were reported,

and the similarities were striking.

It was the same story, the same script he was going by every time,

and basically what he'd say,

his phone would have been lost - it would have been lost on a train.

He'd give the reference number,

and then he'd ask for a handset replacement.

By sifting through the evidence,

Darren was able to figure out how the scam worked.

The phones were real.

The claims, in a sense,

are not real because he never actually lost the phone.

He's got a phone, and he's basically obtaining a second phone

on the strength of saying, "I've lost one,"

so he'll get a replacement or a cash reimbursement.

The replacement phones were then sold on the black market

for a tidy profit,

and any reimbursements were banked.

However, he'd made one basic error, for which he'd pay the price.

The voice was very similar all the time,

so they believed it was the same person.

And all the losses occurred a suspiciously short time after

the insurance was taken out.

At this point,

it seemed a large-scale fraud was being attempted,

so they followed the money trail.

The bank account always has to come back to somebody

and that way we really sort of narrowed it down.

To one person - a man called Lateef Irawo.

Mr Irawo came up as owning those bank accounts,

where he had contact with or control of with those bank accounts.

But the sheer number of claims he'd made using his details -

name, address and bank account - meant the scam hit a snag.

Mr Irawo was, sort of, running out of options.

The insurance company was getting wise to him and refusing

a lot of the claims he was making.

That silence was deafening.

As if submitting fake claims wasn't bad enough,

he decided to up the ante by branching into identity theft.

This was his blatant attempt to cover his tracks when

he took out the insurance contracts.

He was using different identities, pretending to be someone else.

There would be different addresses,

but the pattern would start coming in again,

cos he'd have to change it somewhere along the line for him to benefit,

for him to get the gain.

And to get the replacement phone, it has to be sent to an address

where he can pick it up from.

This meant he had to change the false address he'd given

when taking out the contract.

Like most fraudsters,

Irawo tried to maximise the income from the identities he'd stolen.

Experience has shown us that they don't just open one contract.

They'll go down the high streets,

they'll open a contract in all the providers,

get as many phones as they can with that ID.

So, it's not usually one phone to one person -

it could end up with four or five phones against their name.

But this tactic only worked up to a point -

his victims soon became aware that their details had been stolen.

We did checks with Action Fraud

to see if these people had actually reported in

and a majority of them actually had reported losses.

Irawo was being pursued from every direction.

The BTP made its move and raided an address associated with him.

Pieces of suspect paperwork were found.

Several of them turned out to be fraudulent documents,

counterfeit documents,

and this would be either utility bills or identity documents.

The evidence against him was overwhelming,

and Irawo was arrested and finally brought to justice.

Mr Irawo was found...

He pleaded guilty to the conspiracy

and to the possession of articles for use in fraud

and to the money-laundering.

Mr Irawo received three years' imprisonment.

It was a good result, really,

for the courts to hand out a heavy sentence.

Sentenced alongside him were Timothy Edembe Ikome and Ayeni Adekunle,

who both received 21 months inside.

It's not just a one-off.

This was almost a campaign by Mr Irawo to try

and defraud the insurance company.

There's a renewed determination to bring the people behind

these crimes to justice.

This is a career criminal, really.

I mean, he spent three years making his living from fraud,

and why should people get away with making fraudulent claims?

It's theft at the end of the day.

It's stealing.

Any problems we have with insurance fraud in the UK pale

in comparison to the scams that are pulled in the States.

US fraudsters will stop at nothing to get their hands on a pay-out,

even if it means committing the ultimate evil.

Meet Julia Merfeld.

The young mother of two is seen here meeting

a contact for the first time.

From the clip, Julia appears relaxed and cheerful,

as she tries to juggle her schedule.

The topic then moves on to money.

A lot of money.

Now, if you're thinking

there's something strange about this scenario,

not least the fact that it's all been recorded

on a hidden camera, then you'd be right. This is no innocent chat.

Julia Merfeld is speaking to a hit man and she's arranging for him

to murder her husband, the father of her children, in cold blood.

But there's a twist.

The hit man is actually an undercover police officer.

Which was worth a huge 400,000.

With the camera rolling, the officer has to get Merfeld to admit

as much as possible, which means going into specifics.

In order to win Merfeld's trust,

the officer needs to put on the performance of his life.

Evidently, Merfeld has already put a lot of thought into the hit.

The only time Merfeld shows any concern is when she

speculates that a burglary-gone-wrong scenario

might be off-putting for a potential housemate.

She is also keen that the murder doesn't happen inside the property.

To guarantee she gets the life insurance pay-out,

Merfeld is keen to put on a good show.

While the evidence on camera is strong, the officer needs to

make sure there can be no doubt about Merfeld's intent.

He rounds things up and arranges to meet again.

The next day, the officer waits.

Whether Merfeld returns is a test of how convincing he's been.

But she's here, and she's come prepared.

But she's yet to hand over the money,

something that could prove to be a vital piece of evidence.

She appears to be justifying her actions

as a twisted act of kindness to spare him going through a divorce.

From the officer's point of view,

it's vital that there's no ambiguity.

He needs to push her into specifics.

For the first time, she looks troubled.

The officer steers the conversation towards money.

If she hands over the down payment, he's got proof of her intent.

At this point, he makes it clear there's no backing down.

The officer gives her a final warning.

If she's going to call it off, it has to be now.

But there are no second thoughts and no mercy.

Shortly afterwards, she was arrested

and eventually pleaded guilty to solicitation to murder.

Amazingly, her husband stood by her,

saying, "She had been nothing but a great mother to our two children."

However, the judge thought otherwise

and sentenced her to more than five years and eight months behind bars.

Nobody likes paying more than we have to for everyday services.

But this is exactly what's happening with insurance fraud.

Scammers and conmen are swindling their way to

pay-outs that they don't deserve.

The knock on effect is that the extra costs

result in eve-increasing premiums.

We're getting hit in the pocket,

and it's not just organised criminal gangs to blame.

Exaggerated household claims also take their toll.

But, instead of getting away with it,

more and more of these fraudsters are being claimed and shamed.