Episode 4 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...

The 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, the Met Police Traffic Unit hunt for a crash-for-cash suspect...

One particular person that I'm looking for.

If he's identified, then I will go and arrest him.

I've a warrant...

..a claimant's story falls apart...

..and a trip-and-slip claim is grounded by CCTV.

When we first saw the footage, you can't help but chuckle

at its ridiculous attempts to invent a claim.

It's more a case of deliberately trying to invent a claim

so that she can claim compensation.

Now, as we all know,

when we get behind the wheel, driving does have its dangers.

But one of the greatest risks on our roads are crash-for-cash gangs.

They're ruthless, they're convincing and they don't care who gets hurt.

Here's how it works.

First, the gang choose a victim, then they move their two cars

into position in front of the target.

Gang car number one then slams on its brakes.

Gang car two reacts by breaking hard,

resulting in a rear-end shunt from the victim.

Gang car one then turns off at the nearest possible exit,

pretending to be unaware of the crash,

leaving the victim supposedly at fault for the damage

to gang car two.

The gang then exaggerates the amount of damage and injury

in order to get more compensation.

It's so well practised that you might not even realise

you've been a victim, but the police are fighting back.

The Met's Roads & Transport Policing Unit

has built its reputation on smashing organised criminal gangs

operating crash-for-cash rings.

In this next case, they were approached by a large retailer.

The company was concerned about a series of incidents

involving their delivery vans.

DI Dave Hindmarsh heads up the proactive team

for the Traffic Command.

This fraud first came to light

by one of the well-known supermarkets...

came to ourselves, the Met Police.

They believed they had a problem

with one of their distribution centres and the fact

that it had a disproportionate amount of collisions,

which they now believed to be suspicious.

But it soon became clear this was no ordinary crash-for-cash operation.

Something strange was afoot.

The suspicious collisions and claims were varied.

There was the usual induced collision that we see quite a lot,

with a vehicle running into the back of another.

But there were also some other collisions

which were vehicles reversing round corners into parked cars,

which we hadn't seen before.

So it was quite unusual to have two different sets of circumstances.

Either way, a considerable amount of money was at stake.

In terms of the claims that were coming in,

they were for personal injury, whiplash,

pre-accident value for the vehicle,

credit hire for a replacement vehicle

whilst the other one was being repaired or had been written off.

They were averaging around about £20,000-£30,000 per claim.

But as yet, they didn't know how many bogus collisions

they were dealing with or how to connect the main suspects.

We were investigating this for some time

and we were a bit confused because some of the links

weren't there where we would expect them to be,

and then there was a slight eureka moment by the officer involved

in the case when we actually identified there were two gangs

who had actually targeted the supermarket chain

independent of each other,

which was why we couldn't find links with every single person involved.

We'd never come across two different gangs who weren't working

with each other, didn't know about each other

targeting the same victim.

It was quite unusual from our point of view.

This unprecedented coincidence explained the two different types

of circumstances.

The team then looked into the individuals associated

with each group.

One of the organised gangs,

we identified the ringleader as Bashir Zairi.

Zairi was an interesting character.

In fact, he had used various derivatives of his name

to become involved in what appeared to be about 100 collisions

and, all told, he'd made about £279,000 out of those collisions.

A breathtaking amount of money.

The next step for DI Hindmarsh's team was to raid addresses

they suspected were connected to Zairi

and the raft of sham claims.

We couldn't initially pin what address he resided at,

so we decided we would execute some search warrants at two addresses

in north London. Those addresses had been used significantly

in a number of the collision claims, so it was a good place to start.

The magistrates gave us two search warrants

and we executed those both on the same day.

So, early on the morning of 27th March, 2013, a squad of officers

from the Met Police's Traffic Enforcement Department

executed the two warrants.

Dave's colleague, DC Anthony Recchia gives a briefing before the raid.

We're going to divide into two teams,

hit the two addresses, which are opposite each other.

There's one particular person that I'm looking for.

Bashir Zairi.

If he's identified and he's there, then I will go and arrest him.

Briefing over, the officers travel to the raid locations.

Any operation comes with risks.

They have no idea what they're going to find

or who might be lying in wait.

Still to come...

I've got a warrant to search your address.

..the Traffic Unit officers make a crucial discovery...

In a nutshell, these two addresses

are involved in about 100 fraudulent road traffic claims.

..and a personal injury claimant's story doesn't stand up.

We see a huge range of cases,

and CCTV can sometimes be a little bit 50/50,

but this was absolutely 100% compelling and damning.

Photography is a pastime that's now easier than ever

with smartphones and apps.

But take a look at this.

Did you know that muggins here contains a wealth of information,

or metadata?

For example, the date and time you took it

to the location, down to the street name.

It instantly puts fraud investigators in the picture

and can be used to shoot down false claims.

Simon Cook is the Head of Special Investigations at Cega,

a company that deals with all sorts of travel insurance claims,

from medical emergencies to mislaid gadgets.

A customer contacted us to make a claim for a lost watch,

which he unfortunately lost while swimming on holiday in France.

The woman then went into detail about the circumstances of the loss.

The customer told us that the incident happened on a Sunday.

She also said that this was a triathlon watch,

but she specifically made reference to not competing in a triathlon

at the time of losing the watch.

We thought that was extremely strange

cos we hadn't even asked a question about that.

Hey, there might have been a reason

why she wanted to set the record straight.

This is significant because the customer's policy

doesn't provide cover if she was taking part in a race.

To a fraud expert like Simon, it suggested that there was more

going on than met the eye.

As part of the standard claims procedure,

we ask the customer to provide us

with some form of proof-of-ownership documentation.

We thought she probably should have had something to support the watch,

as the actual item would be still within a 12-month warranty period.

Not an unreasonable assumption for a top-of-the-range watch.

The customer had a think about it and stated initially

that she didn't have anything at all

to support the ownership of the watch.

However, it wasn't long before they heard from her again.

In the meantime, things seem to have changed.

After a short period of time,

the customer sent us a completed claim form

and she also sent us a photograph which actually showed the box,

the guarantee and all other documents that related to the watch.

This was the last thing Simon and the team were expecting.

We thought that was particularly strange

because the customer had made a specific point during the first call

saying that she'd thrown away the box

and all the other documents relating to its purchase.

Although it seemed suspicious,

it WAS possible that it could have been an old photo taken

before the items were thrown away.

There was only one way to find out.

As part of our review, we check the properties, or metadata,

of the photograph and noted that the photograph had in fact been taken

after the incident date

and it had been taken at a different address

to the customer's home address.

Now, either the customer had access to a time machine

or her story was seriously off track.

This is when the claim was referred to our Special Investigations Unit.

They wasted no time looking into what the customer was doing

on what day during her French break.

We decided to conduct some internet research,

which quickly found the customer's name as listed as competing

in a race in France at the time she claimed she'd lost the watch,

and therefore the watch must have been lost at the time

she was in the triathlon.

This completely contradicted what the customer had told Cega.

The fact the customer specifically told us she wasn't taking part

in a triathlon tends to support that she knew

she wouldn't be covered for this incident.

No cover meant she wouldn't have been entitled to a pay-out.

It looked as though the claim had run its course,

but Cega needed to be sure.

Based on the level of evidence we had obtained,

we decided we were going to need to speak with the customer

by way of telephone interview.

They started by asking the claimant what should have been

an easy question - the date of the loss.

At this point, the customer had in fact given a different date

to the date that she originally provided to us

during the initial call.

We challenged the customer on this particular point,

regarding the date,

and the call went particularly quiet.

It was a straightforward question

and yet the claimant struggled to give a straight answer.

For fraud experts like Simon and his team,

umming, ahing and pausing

are classic signs of someone who's trying to buy time.

If a story is genuine,

then there's no reason for a claimant to be hesitant.

Things had started badly

and unfortunately for our claimant here,

they only got worse when she was asked about the photograph.

After further deliberation,

she stated her husband's friend

had probably taken the photograph of his own watch

to give to her in order to support her claim.

It was now clear that the watch claim's days were numbered.

The customer clearly misrepresented the facts about her participating

in the triathlon.

In addition to this,

she had provided us with false information regarding the photograph

she had sent us.

And she had nothing to say for herself when she was confronted

with her dishonesty.

She'd admitted that she had been less than honest

and this cast doubt on her entire story.

This could have had very serious consequences.

Cega had no choice but to call time on the watch claim.

We declined the claim and invoked the relevant fraud condition

on the policy and we didn't ever hear from the customer again.

To be perfectly honest,

I would have been amazed if we had heard from her.

Earlier, the Met's Roads & Policing Unit were investigating

a suspected crash-for-cash fraudster called Bashir Zairi.

They are now ready to move in and put a stop to his scam.

Two addresses. One of the premises is a semidetached house.

It's just a car park on the left here.

And the other premises is one of these flats in here.

It's 7am when they arrive,

and both of the addresses are hit simultaneously.

Good morning.

Police.

Morning, police. Let us in?

We've got a warrant to search your address.

Go upstairs. Go.

At both locations, the inhabitants cooperate

and allow the officers entry.

We'll just have a quick look, and if I'm happy that it's safe,

we will let you get up and get dressed on your own, is that OK?

Unfortunately, there's no sign of the main suspect.

The person we're looking for is not present.

But other people are.

There is correspondence which relates to that person

that we're looking for the premises,

so we are just going to start our search now.

With Zairi not present,

the success of the raid rests

on whether the team can find documentary evidence

to strengthen the case against him.

Hello? All right.

Police officer. Anyone else in this room with you?

We are looking for any documentation relating to the claims.

That could be physical documentation, bits of paper,

it may well be e-mails or documents that have been stored digitally,

so that could well be on laptops or computers.

So far, the search has turned up

lots of potential pieces of evidence.

20 minutes into the raid, DI Hindmarsh

has made an important discovery.

We've identified another address,

which officers are just on their way to now,

to find hopefully our subject.

If all goes well,

they will soon have their main suspect

and several sacks of evidence.

We've seized all the media equipment, laptops, computers

and mobile telephones, because that will obviously assist us.

In a nutshell, these two addresses are involved

in about 100 fraudulent road traffic claims.

With the search over, the officers return to base.

The evidence collected on the raid

meant that they could prove the connection

between the properties and Zairi,

even when he was using a slightly different identity.

Because they were derivatives of his name,

it could have been open to him to say that that was not him.

But the paper documents,

they proved the link with Mr Zairi to those addresses.

It was exactly what the team had set out to find.

In terms of the two raids, they were very successful.

The fact that we managed to recover some significant evidence.

And there was also a result for the officers trailing Zairi.

We were able to find another address in North London

that a couple of our uniformed colleagues who were present with us,

went off that address and were able to arrest and detain Bashir

that morning. So it was a good bit of work.

But this was just the start.

It takes years, unfortunately,

from the inception of a case to the conclusion at the court.

In the months and years that followed the raid,

Dave and his team worked steadily to build a case against Zairi.

It transpired that he had attempted

to gain a considerable amount of money.

He had claimed about £313,000

but actually only got around £279,000 himself.

Zairi eventually appeared at court

and all the hard work that had been put into the investigation paid off.

He pleaded guilty. He realised that the evidence against him

was overwhelming.

Taking into account how much money he'd tried to claim,

the judge came down hard.

Mr Zairi was sentenced to three years' imprisonment.

A significant custodial period

and something that is becoming more common.

The courts have become more alive

to induced commissions and the sentencing has started to go up.

This is down to the realisation that crash for cash

-isn't just about the money.

-There is also the human cost.

People are going out there, causing crashes.

They do not know what the outcome is going to be.

Someone could be seriously injured or, in fact, killed.

With Zairi behind bars,

the force is in the process of recovering the money

that was paid out.

There could have been serious consequences

if the supermarket hadn't realised something was wrong.

Had they not noticed the issue and come to the Met Police,

then that would have continued,

and who knows where it would have led to?

What could have happened with regards to injuries

and people being killed and seriously injured on the roads.

And, of course, you can't forget the financial aspect,

but certainly, we can say that people would have been at risk

of being injured.

Now, like most people, I'm guilty of having a good old moan

about health and safety. But at the end of the day,

it's there to protect us.

And if we're injured because our employers

haven't provided a safe working environment, then it's right

that we're entitled to compensation.

But it's wrong when this is exploited by fraudsters.

Scott Clayton is Zurich's claims fraud and investigations manager

and he recently dealt with a workplace injury case.

The claim that we received from Ms Quansah-Okoe

was in respect of personal injury.

She claimed that she fell within the canteen of Lambeth College

on what she says was a wet floor.

According to her, this was no mere stumble.

The injury was quite serious that she was telling us she suffered.

It was soft tissue injuries, damage to her wrist, leg, ankle and,

believe it or not, she actually said that she'd chipped a tooth.

The claimant alleged she had required

a considerable amount of treatment.

Ms Quansah-Okoe suggested that she had been to hospital

straight after the accident.

She was off work for two or three weeks,

and she had six bouts of physiotherapy treatment.

All this added up to a tidy sum.

We estimated the claim to be worth in the region of £8,000.

So quite a considerable sum of money.

But then again, she was saying that she was considerably injured.

With so much money on the line,

the claimant was asked to provide more detail

about how the accident had actually happened.

She mentioned that the floor was wet,

and she only noticed that the floor was wet

when she actually felt the wetness on her dress.

So she was saying that the college canteen floor was wet

and that caused her to slip and be injured.

According to her version of events,

the college had been negligent and was therefore liable.

On the surface, this looked like a claim that, certainly,

we would consider paying, because of the nature of the injuries,

and what caused them.

What made this case different was that Lambeth College,

when they submitted the claim, also enclosed some CCTV footage.

The footage changed everything.

Once the insurance company had looked at the CCTV

and looked at what Ms Quansah-Okoe was claiming,

they had obvious concerns,

and so they passed the claim on to IFED for investigation.

IFED is the City of London Police's

insurance fraud enforcement department,

headed up by DCI Oli Little.

He reviewed the footage.

I think, given the injuries that she's claiming for,

what we'd expect to see is somebody lose their footing

really suddenly and fall down.

One of those ones where you look at it and you go, "Ooh!

"That must have hurt." But there's nothing like that here.

And judging by the injuries, she's given herself quite a battering.

So the fact that she'd said she chipped a tooth,

she must have slammed her face on the floor.

That sort of footage isn't normally that pleasant to watch.

What we did see was something entirely different.

So different that it completely turned the case on its head.

She walks into the canteen fairly briskly.

But then she notices that the chap's mopping the floor.

So what she's probably done, in my opinion,

is that during that period of time when she slows down,

she's thought herself,

"Here's an opportunity for me to invent an incident

"and claim compensation."

And that's where the idea's come into her head.

And, as you can see, she approaches that post.

The bags come down really carefully, down to the knees,

and then there's that sort of final flourish at the end.

That's nothing like what you would expect to see

if somebody's got injuries head to toe, broken teeth,

it's just complete invention.

The footage completely undermined the case and her credibility.

When we first saw the footage,

you can't help but chuckle at its ridiculous attempt

to invent a claim.

There's no suggestion whatsoever that she had slipped on the floor.

It's more a case of deliberately trying to invent a claim

so that she can claim compensation.

But there was a serious side to the situation, too.

The CCTV was absolutely crucial

because it told us exactly what happened

and, in effect, demonstrated that it was a fraudulent claim.

As far as Zurich was concerned,

her chance of a pay-out was now absolutely zero.

So, we shared the footage with her solicitors

and the claim was discontinued.

But the consequences didn't end there.

If Ms Quansah-Okoe thought she could just walk away from the claim,

she was wrong.

Such was the ridiculous nature of this claim

and the evidence that we had,

we felt this was definitely a good case to refer to IFED.

IFED agreed, and decided to pay the claimant a little visit.

When we arrested Ms Quansah-Okoe, I think she was quite shocked.

Maybe she thought, like a lot of people do,

"What's the worst that can happen if I put this claim in?

"They'll just say no." She didn't expect to get arrested.

She didn't expect to get interviewed by the police.

But that's exactly what happened.

Ms Quansah-Okoe was eventually charged

with fraud by false representation.

You would have thought that she may have decided that the game was up,

but, no, undeterred, she proceeded right through a criminal trial.

Which was surprising!

The case was heard at the Old Bailey.

She pled not guilty, despite the overwhelming evidence against her.

With her star turn caught on CCTV, the outcome was never in doubt.

And a jury found her guilty and she was sentenced

to 80 hours' community service

and ordered to pay £500 towards the cost of running the case.

Perhaps she'll spend that doing some mopping.

Or perhaps working on her acting skills.

We see a huge range of cases,

and CCTV can sometimes be a little bit 50/50,

but this was absolutely 100% compelling and damning.

Insurers like Zurich are determined

to put a stop to the compensation culture.

For us, it was the conviction that mattered,

because it sends a message that people who try and invent these type

of incidents to claim compensation should be warned that,

if you're caught, then you end up feeling the full force of the law.

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 ever 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.