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...

Subject out the vehicle.

..sophisticated data analysis techniques...

SHOUTING

..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 car-con's dodgy insurance policies are uncovered...

If you write off your car

when you have one of these policies,

the cost of the damage will have to be borne by you.

A personal injury claim from a boxer is knocked back...

The collision at the lights was described by the member of

staff as, "Minor."

He didn't even know it had happened until he felt a tiny bump.

And a phoney caller is encouraged to come clean.

Now matter how experienced you are behind the wheel,

every time you take to the road, there's a risk.

Motor insurance offers customers protection

in the event of an accident.

Fraudsters have long being targeting the car insurance industry,

but one particular scam, known as "ghost broking", is a major issue.

A ghost broker will pretend to be a licensed insurance broker

and obtain a cheap policy using false information.

He'll then sell you what appears to be

a genuine insurance policy at a bargain price.

But what you actually receive is a completely bogus certificate

offering zero cover that's not worth the paper it's printed on.

If you buy one of these fake policies in good faith,

the law is crystal clear.

John Beadle knows the consequences of this scam can be severe.

The bottom line with this is that

if you write off your car

when you have one of these policies,

you will be un-covered,

and the cost of the damage, or the loss of your car,

will have to be borne by you, because you will be uninsured.

Purchasing a spurious policy from a ghost broker

could be a financially devastating way

to try and save a few quid on your car insurance.

Meet Jeffrey Derek King.

He used to hire cars to people, sell jewellery...

A wheeler-dealer who could even sell you a cheap car insurance policy.

But his deals on wheels weren't all they were cracked up to be.

Mr King came to our attention because we spotted a number

of unusual patterns in new policies being taken on

via authorised garage outlets,

where you purchase a new car, and they will

issue you with a policy of insurance.

He would continually contact our company,

disguising his identity, but obviously he leaves footprints

and patterns, telephone numbers, and so forth,

which linked him together.

With alarm bells ringing, John's team dug deeper.

And they discovered 50 policies all connected

by one mobile phone number.

They all led back to a website operated by King.

And in the end we put together

a comprehensive intelligence package on him.

And then, having identified who he actually was,

and then referred that to IFED.

IFED is the City of London Police's

insurance fraud enforcement department.

A dedicated team of detectives dedicated to stopping

insurance fraud cheats.

There's ever more sophisticated detection tools being used by

the industry.

We're getting more and more cases every day.

This elite squad has prevented millions of pounds being paid

out to criminals in fraudulent claims.

From now on, insurance cheats needs to look over their shoulders.

It's all fraud, it's all crime, and it can all lead to prison.

Police! Don't move! Stay where you are!

Simon Styles is IFED's financial investigator,

and was part of the team that took on the case.

RSA's enquiries had already identified that King was behaving

very suspiciously by making dozens of calls to them

under various guises.

So, the first thing that IFED detectives did was to take

a closer look at his business activities.

From the outside, Jeffrey King appeared to be

a hard-working individual, an entrepreneur, if you like.

IFED quickly established that King had his fingers in lots of pies.

But it was one of his online enterprises

that stood out in particular.

Mr King had advertised for

the selling of insurance

on 28 occasions via the internet.

Those companies were checked and details from that were taken

which showed that Jeffrey King was behind those advertisements.

And it was from that that the investigation really took

a step forward.

King many have been a man of many trades,

but licensed insurance broker wasn't one of them.

He was selling fake insurance policies which

unlucky recipients believed to be 100% genuine.

IFED quickly sussed out that King was taking advantage of

a special offer available at certain car dealerships,

where customers who'd brought brand-new cars

could claim a week's free insurance cover.

He just obtained the dealer code off a flyer

at any dealership.

He was then able to ring RSA, purporting to be anybody,

and having the details of a registration number,

was able to obtain free seven-day cover.

And as a result of that,

received, by e-mail, the cover.

And it's from that cover he would sell on to

unsuspecting members of the public.

So, King had a source of genuine certificates

he acquired with false information.

He then doctored the document with the details of the individual

he intended to pass the worthless policy off to.

But, little did he know, that IFED were on to him.

And with his MO revealed,

it wasn't long before the case against King

started to accelerate.

I was able to link

the certificates that were purchased by

Mr King to money that was placed in his account.

That came to just over £65,000.

As a financial investigator, it's Simon's job to look for

connections between suspected fraudsters and their income.

And in the case of King, there was no shortage of evidence.

By now, we had obtained evidence that Jeffrey king was acting

as a ghost broker.

We decided to visit his home address

and ask him directly what he was up to.

On the 6th December 2013, officers from IFED carried out

two early-morning raids on addresses linked to Jeffrey Derek King.

DS Craig Mullish heads up a team

that raids his home address.

The plan of action today is to execute

a warrant in Chadwell Heath, Essex, and in addition to that,

simultaneously, there'll be another warrant executed in East London.

The element of surprise is crucial to a successful raid.

Targeting multiple addresses at the same time prevents

communication between any of the suspects, and minimises the

risk of potentially damning evidence from being destroyed.

All our enquiries linked Mr King to the family address.

Just before the raids took place I identified another address

that he'd recently moved to.

And so we decided to knock on two doors

on the day of Mr King's arrest.

Over in East London, DC Alex Cooley is leading the raid

on King's second potential location.

We have to remain on our guard.

We have no reason to believe the suspect is aware that we're

going to be turning up early in the morning,

so he could react in any one of a whole number of ways.

Today, the evidence that we'll be looking for would be

computers and any device capable of storing data.

Together with documentation relating to insurance policies.

It's not uncommon for suspects to make a dash for it.

So, before knocking on the door,

officers get into position to cover all escape routes.

-Good morning.

-Morning.

HE KNOCKS

Oh, hi. Morning to you. City of London Police.

DS Mullish enters King's home address,

placing him under arrest on suspicion of fraud.

The team then search King's home...

..and after three hours emerge with several bags of key evidence.

Having swept King's property,

DS Mullish inspects his car

for further incriminating documents.

From what you say...

-Yeah.

-..we're not going to see anything in this car, right?

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

-You stay there.

-OK.

Despite King's casual attitude,

it doesn't take long to find even more evidence.

The document seized from the suspect's vehicle is

a copy of an insurance document in another person's name,

other than the suspect,

which is further evidence of the crime that we're looking into today.

With a hefty haul of evidence bagged and tagged,

it's loaded up, along with King.

The evidence that we've found today relates to various insurance policy

documentation in other peoples' names apart from the suspect.

Which is good evidence to suggest they are absolutely linked

into the investigation that we're currently undertaking,

and we've also seized mobile phones and electrical devices.

Motor documentation, MOT certificates.

All in all, very good evidence.

Over in east London, DC Cooley and his team have searched King's

family home, which has been equally successful.

We found documentation relating to motor insurance policies,

we found a letter reportedly written by the suspect

to an insurance company brokering terms and conditions

on behalf of a reported client.

The haul of evidence meant the brakes had been well and

truly applied to King's operation.

We found a large number of

bogus certificates.

We found original certificates that had been scanned and changed,

and these details had been sent to

unsuspecting members of the public,

to drive around without any cover whatsoever.

This was the evidence IFED needed to take King offline for good.

When given the opportunity to tell his side of the story,

King refused to break down.

He tried to justify the certificates

in his possession by making no comment.

He made no comment throughout the investigation.

He thought it would go away.

But it wasn't going to.

The case proceeded to court, at the Old Bailey,

where King pleaded not guilty to three counts of fraud by

false representation, and one count of money laundering.

But the evidence was overwhelming.

Jeffrey King was found guilty by a unanimous verdict and

he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment.

King's illegal sales of fake insurance policies had been

shut down for good.

For Simon, it was the end of a long, complex investigation.

But his work wasn't quite done yet.

It was my job to follow the money.

I found that Mr King had made an awful lot of money

from criminal activity.

I managed to return £20,000 to victims of crime.

Job well done.

Jeffrey King thought no-one would come knocking at his door.

He was wrong. This is a message to everyone out there who is thinking,

or is committing, insurance fraud, that we won't stand for it.

Like Mr King, we'll follow you, we'll track you down,

we'll knock on your door, and you will be sentenced and convicted,

and spend time behind bars to think on where you went wrong.

Later, the door is firmly shut on an

outrageously cheeky personal injury claim.

We were shocked.

You know, this story was no longer adding up,

and because of that we had to probe a little bit further.

And a man is prepared to reverse into another motorist - twice -

for a pay-out.

It makes me angry.

This fraud is... Well, it's disgraceful, really.

The Royal Mail has a fleet of over 30,000 vehicles

working around the clock, seven days a week.

With such a large presence on UK roads,

the occasional incident is an inevitability.

You'd like to think, though, that when an accident does happen,

it'll be a fair exchange,

with neither party trying to take advantage of the situation.

If only.

Unfortunately, that's not always the case.

Royal Mail receive their fair share of traffic-related

personal injury claims.

It's Martin Hancock's job to sort out the sincere

from the suspect ones.

Like one case he dealt with in 2015.

A personal injury claim detailed a member of the public in

a collision with a Royal Mail vehicle at a junction.

Mr Missen, the member of the public involved,

alleged that the Royal Mail vehicle reversed into him at some lights.

A common enough accident, but as we all know,

reversing at a set of traffic lights

is not a usual manoeuvre.

Our investigations with the member of staff stated that

he was stationary at the lights, and Mr Missen collided with him.

While the version of events differed dramatically,

the incident itself seemed like six of one, half a dozen of the other.

The collision of the lights was described by

the member of staff as, "Minor."

He didn't even know it had happened until he felt a tiny bump.

Both the drivers got out, looked at the vehicles,

noticed no damage whatsoever.

Neither were injured. They parted company without swapping details.

A couple of months later,

Mr Missen submitted a personal injury claim against Royal Mail.

Yep. This is the same accident that one of the drivers reported

to not even have felt.

As the claim was being examined by our department,

several inconsistencies were noticed.

Mr Missen didn't go and see any medical facility for over a year.

He stated his injuries were severe.

They included to his neck, his back, his arm, his shoulder,

and his forearm.

His claim was in excess of £20,000 - around 5,000, including the damage

to his vehicle, and 15,000 for the injury sustained during the collision.

Well, a surprising amount of injuries

from such a small accident,

which Missen claimed prevented him from competing

in his hobby of amateur boxing.

Suspicious that they were dealing with a flighty fraudster,

Royal Mail did some digging.

Our investigation concentrated on Mr Missen's social media.

And, despite his claims that he couldn't box, within two months

of the accident, he'd won five amateur boxing matches in Chester.

Oh, you heard right. That's...

...fights.

Missen wasn't just knocking out opponents, he was going for

he was going for the world heavyweight belt of blags.

But the Royal Mail weren't about to take this on the chin

and notified the police.

Mr Missen was arrested, taken to a police station and interviewed.

During the interview he showed slight remorse.

However, I believe this was only due to the fact that he'd been

caught red-handed and the evidence against him was so strong.

There was no way Missen would be able to sidestep the evidence

when the case reached court.

He was prosecuted for perverting the course of justice and fraud

by false representation.

He was given an eight-month prison sentence.

The judge described the fraud as,

"a squalid little fraud by a dishonest person."

Royal Mail operate a zero-tolerance policy for anyone

who attempts to defraud them.

People think Royal Mail's and easy target for personal injury claims.

However, we will examine every single personal injury claim

and pursue it, if it's deemed to be questionable.

A fact Darell Missen now knows all too well.

With plenty of time to reflect on his attempted fraud.

Mr Missen's actions caused him to go to prison, lose his job,

and have a criminal record.

I think, on reflection, he wouldn't do it again.

Yep. This punchy pretender should have thrown in the towel

and walked away from this fight before it had even begun.

Often, it's the first we reach for when we wake up

and the last thing we look at before we go to sleep.

Smartphones are now an integral part of modern life.

But, with handsets costing around £500,

they are a high-value commodity which insurance cheats

have identified as an easy way to make a quick buck.

Whether you're calling, texting, e-mailing, sharing, surfing,

or streaming, today's smartphone

is something many just can't live without.

So, what happens if your device gets accidentally damaged, or ditched?

Luckily, there are people like Andy Morris at Assurant Solutions

who protect our phones against all manner of device disasters.

Andy's team received one particular call from a customer

who'd made a few phone faux pas in quick succession.

The very first claim that this individual submitted to us

was for a loss of an iPhone which would have a value of over £500.

That was assessed on its own merits and the claim was accepted.

Amazingly, within a week,

the claimant telephoned us back again to process a claim.

So the claimant had previously said that his first phone

had been stolen from his workplace.

He then submitted a second claim, stating he'd left

the replacement handset on the bus while on the way into work.

Now, once is unlucky,

but to lose two phones in as many weeks raised suspicion.

Our fraud team felt it was worthwhile

investigating a little further.

With the claimant's run of bad luck not ringing true,

a claims investigator gave him a call

to talk through the details of his most recent claim.

It seemed like a plausible story,

but Andy's team had been doing their homework and it appeared

the handsets have more in common than just their make and model.

Upon further investigation of the second claim

and reviewing both the second claim and now the first claim,

it became very clear that both devices

had been sold to the same recycling shop.

This information was put to the claimant.

Our fraud agents had received the information from the recycling shop.

Not only the receipts of the transaction but, also, the identity

and the documentation that the claimant had provided to that shop.

The claimant hadn't just sold on his phones,

he'd inadvertently sold himself out

by providing the recycling shop with his genuine personal details.

Armed with this knowledge, it was time to take the challenge to him.

During the call, the claims handler provides lots of opportunity

for the claimant to be honest.

He actually declines to take that opportunity.

While the claimant is given the chance to press cancel on his lie,

he refuses to tell the truth.

But it isn't long before he pushes redial,

managing to get through to a claims handler

who's unfamiliar with the case.

The claimant, unprompted,

then telephones back and asked to speak to our claims handler.

And it would be a call the claims handler would never forget.

OK. Let's hear that one more time.

The claimant had attempted a successful claim, initially,

and then, effectively, tried it on again.

As the claimant talks through details of his admission,

the full extent of the fraud becomes clear.

After selling his first phone to a recycling shop,

the claimant has then sold the replacement handset

to the same store

and attempted to make separate insurance claims

for both devices.

He then has a discussion with our claims handler

to ask about what would be the consequences of his behaviour.

This claimant, actually, is noticeably concerned

about the potential consequence of his fraudulent behaviour.

Er, maybe not the next best time to be asking for an upgrade.

Due to the customer's honesty, it resulted in us

not needing to do any more investigation in this case

and the claimant withdrew their claim.

On this occasion, the claimant had a lucky escape.

It could easily have been a different story,

as the insurer could have blacklisted, or prosecuted him,

for attempted fraud.

Still to come,

a claimant is looking for a double bubble pay-out on a burglary.

Not only was he using some invoices to claim twice,

some of them were invoices he'd made up himself.

He'd forged them.

Ever wondered why your insurance premiums creep up

every time you renew?

Well, insurance fraud is costing the industry around £1.3 billion a year

and that cost has been passed on to honest customers.

The perpetrators ranging from highly organised crime syndicates

to one-off chancers, the spectrum of fraudsters is huge.

But it's actually opportunistic fraud,

often perpetrated by otherwise honest individuals,

who don't mind exaggerating a claim,

which is an ongoing battle for insurers.

Highlighted in one case that came to Axa's head of fraud,

Richard Davies, in 2015.

Axa's customer told us that they'd been involved

in a very small car park accident.

They were parking up in a bay, they'd opened a door

and, unfortunately, their door had touched the door of a vehicle,

which was next to them.

Unfortunately, an all-too-easy mistake to make

in a tightly packed car park.

But a fairly straightforward claim for Richard's team.

After the claim was reported to us,

we contacted Mr Kamal, who was the third party.

He confirmed the story that we'd been told that our customer

had parked up, next to him, that the passenger had opened the door

and that door had lightly touched his car.

As far as we're concerned, this is a very minor accident.

You know, we're looking at a small claim,

maybe to repair the door of the third party.

But this claim would quickly take a quite astonishing U-turn.

We received two claims totalling £25,000 worth of damages.

The first was from Mr Kamal himself,

who said he had a serious spine injury.

The second was for his partner, Miss Keenan,

who also had a serious spine injury, resulting from this accident.

£25,000.

Let's not forget that this was a minor incident

between two stationary vehicles.

But Shakil Kamal and Kerry Keenan

were claiming serious spinal injuries.

However, Richard suspected that the only thing crooked was their story.

We were shocked.

You know, this story was no longer adding up

and, because of that, we had to probe a little bit further.

The report that we received from the medical experts

said that Mr Kamal claimed he'd been side shunted in a car park.

This is completely different to somebody opening a door

and lightly touching the vehicle.

Kamal had parked his original version of events

and traded it in for something a little more dramatic.

But Richard wasn't about to swallow this exaggerated tale.

We decided that the stories were completely inconsistent

and that we weren't going to make any offer to settle the claim.

But Kemal was convinced there was some mileage left

in his claim and was determined to pursue it at all costs.

We thought that Mr Kamal would simply walk away from this claim.

Unfortunately, he decided that he was going to take the fight on

and he took us to court.

But it was in court where the real car crash occurred.

When Mr Kamal got to court, his story was completely inconsistent.

He kept changing his version of events.

Mr Kamal was found to be fundamentally dishonest.

In simple terms, the judge thought he was lying to the court.

In this case, Mr Kamal ended up with a bill for £18,000

and those were the costs that we'd incurred

in trying to defend this fraudulent claim.

Two years ago Shakil Kamal

could have potentially walked away from court

without having to cough up a penny

for his blatant and opportunistic attempt at fraud.

In 2014, the Fundamental Dishonesty Defence Act

was introduced to combat this behaviour.

It's down to this law that Kamal was landed with an £18,000 bill to pay.

Solicitor Jared Mallinson has plenty of experience

using this law to good effect in court.

The ruin of fundamental dishonesty was brought into the

insurance industry as a major deterrent for would-be fraudsters.

If a person making a claim loses at trial,

they wouldn't have to pay the insurer's costs.

If, however, that claims to have been fundamentally dishonest

by the judge who's hearing the case,

then the claimant does to have to play the insurer's costs.

Those, in a standard road traffic accident case,

can amount to around £10,000, or so, or even more in some cases.

And the courts have zero tolerance for tall tales, exaggeration,

or embellishment when it comes to making an insurance claim.

Let's say somebody has a genuine injury, but they also put in

a claim for loss of earnings, which is entirely fraudulent.

If the judge finds that the loss of earnings claim is fundamentally

dishonest, then the entire claim has to be dismissed by the judge.

And for those who fancy their chances with a fraudulent claim,

you could end up losing far more than you ever had to gain.

If those costs aren't paid, we can take further enforcement action,

which could include sending bailiffs out to take control

of possessions, that could include their car.

There could be further measures, such as asking the court to force

that person to sell their house to repay their debt.

This law meant that justice was served for Richard

and the team at Axa.

This is a great result for all insurers.

Again, it shows that dishonest claimants will be taken

right the way through the courts and they could end up with

significant judgements against them.

Having to pay back £18,000 to Axa

will be a real challenge for Mr Kamal

and we will make sure that we get that money back.

Now, how do you do your grocery shopping?

I know Sunday evenings, wouldn't be the same for my wife and I

without a cup of tea and a bit of an online shop.

I am a hopeless romantic.

Well, one in four others now do our main food shop online.

And, to meet demand, supermarkets have introduced

thousands of new commercial delivery vehicles to UK roads.

While this service has been eaten up by customers,

it also provided a tasty target for insurance cheats,

who caused deliberate crashes.

A practice known as "crash for cash".

You might be wondering

why fraudsters would target delivery vehicles

It's a subject Tom Gardiner is well versed in.

In the past, commercial vehicles have been deliberately targeted

by fraudsters because they know that they will be insured

and that they are likely to get a pay-out.

With delivery drivers clocking up so many miles, every day,

the risk of incident is high.

Just like the one involving a car and an Iceland delivery van

in Luton, in 2014.

The initial claim that was reported by Mr Hussein

was for damage to his vehicle and for whiplash injuries,

following what appeared to be, on the face of it,

a straightforward rear-end shunt at a junction.

It looked like an everyday claim.

A whiplash injury may be worth £1,500-£3,000.

It may have appeared to have been a run of the mill accident

but Mr Hussein didn't waste any time

in getting in touch with Iceland store manager Ian Bisby.

The driver of the vehicle called me and told me

that my driver had driven into him.

He said, my driver hadn't stopped at a T-junction,

damaged his car and he had a witness.

And that he wanted our insurance details to take the matter further.

But it wasn't long before Ian was to hear a different story.

Within moments, my driver called me

and said a customer reversed into him.

On the face of it, I thought,

the customer's probably more plausible.

He was stationary at a T-junction. My driver approached him.

My driver hit him. That's the way I probably would have viewed it.

The driver in question was Ashley Dissan.

And he wasn't about to let his side of the story be discounted.

I saw his reversing lights come on.

And I thought it was a little bit strange.

You know, seeing as though we were at a set of lights.

The only way forward is forwards.

And then he'd come back so far that the impact had happened,

he rolled forward, I thought, OK, maybe he just got stuck in gear.

And then I saw the reversing lights come on again.

When he started coming back, that's where it, kind of,

hit me that he's just not stopping.

I was just lost for words. I got out of the van

and I, obviously, asked him "What were you doing?"

He said, "I tried to get it into gear and it got stuck into reverse."

"I do apologise." I was, like, "OK. That's fair enough."

He took responsibility.

After that, we just followed on with exchanging insurance details.

He may have been apologetic at the scene of the accident,

but that didn't last long.

It was Ashley's word against Mr Hussein's.

However, Ashley did have an all seeing ally

who would reveal the truth.

What was unusual about this particular case was,

over and above our driver's evidence,

there was dash-cam evidence from our driver's van.

What the dash-cam footage revealed was that this wasn't

a straightforward rear-end shunt, at all.

Dash-cams have been commonplace in commercial vehicles for years.

And what this one revealed was that Mr Hussein

was telling porky pies bigger than any Ashley's van was carrying.

So, let's see what actually happened.

It's a row of traffic. Everybody's got their brake lights on.

Looks like they're waiting to go on to the main road in Luton

Oh! The car in front of my driver reversed back into him.

For no particular reason.

The car hit Ashley's van.

Mr Hussein may have lied about the accident happened

but, maybe, the act itself was genuine driver error.

He's just put a brake light on

and he's reversing again. Into my van.

It's the second time.

It seems that Mr Hussein was running a buy one get one free special

on shunts that day.

It was conclusive evidence

that Ashley's version of events checked out.

Well, it makes me angry because the gentleman told me quite clearly

my driver drove into him.

It's fraud. It's disgraceful, really.

The camera never lies.

And with Mr Hussein's deception discovered,

he was in for a nasty shock.

Mr Hussein was trying to submit a fraudulent claim for damage

to his vehicle and for a whiplash compensation.

In this case, the evidence was so overwhelming that,

not content with just repudiating the claim, we then presented

the case to the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department to prosecute.

The IFED team were successful in bringing the case against

this fraudster and justice was delivered.

At court, Mr Hussein pleaded guilty to fraud

and he received 100 hours community service,

over and above not receiving a penny pay-out himself.

Mr Hussein actually had to repay his own insurers for the damage

that he had caused to his own vehicle, as well.

Mr Hussein's attempt at fraud could have had severe consequences

for Ashley and his family.

We treat safety of our customers very importantly.

The driver in question could have gone down the disciplinary route

and, possibly, lost his job, if we felt he was lying to us

in an investigation of causing an avoidable accident.

He's a driver by trade and his future employer might say,

"Why did you leave your last job?" "I was sacked for crashing a van."

The dash-cam may have saved Ashley's bacon

but he had already suffered needless stress.

I was always questioning whether I'm going to get that dreaded line

of, "I'm sorry, unfortunately, you've lost your job."

But, luckily for me, with the equipment of the dash-cams,

I'm here today and, obviously, going to be here tomorrow.

Every 45 seconds there's an attempted burglary in the UK.

Victims of this invasive crime can be left traumatised

and terrified.

Many household break-ins occur when homeowners are away on holiday.

If the worst should happen,

insurers are there to help pick up the pieces.

Hello, Clare Lunn speaking.

Clare Lunn, head of claims crime prevention for LV,

received one claim from a customer who'd had a nasty shock.

We received a call from our customer, Mr Ghosh,

who reported that he'd returned back from his holiday to find

that his home had been broken into and several items stolen.

In the region of approximately £60,000.

60 grand's worth. That's a financially devastating loss.

So, what exactly was taken?

We asked Mr Ghosh to provide a list of items,

these included a home cinema system, CDs,

items of clothing, sports equipment,

lots of jewellery, and watches,

and a quite sizeable amount of cash, you know, £12,000.

With such a high-value claim from what appeared to be

a typical residential address, further enquiries were made.

The policy had only just been taken out with LV.

And our systems had flagged that Mr Ghosh had had

a previous claim with another insurer the previous year.

And the circumstances surrounding that claim

seemed quite similar to this one.

But the similarities didn't end there.

We also contacted the previous insurance company

that handled the other break-in and we found that there was

a similar loss list provided to them,

in the region of £34,000,

and that 20 of the items

that was allegedly stolen this time matched the previous claim.

A strong claim of claim deja vu was occurring.

While the previous claim with another insurer had been paid out,

Claire wasn't going to hand over any cash

before Ghosh's paperwork had been authenticated.

When we first got the receipts, they look pretty genuine.

So, it was only the fact that we called the company

and checked out the validity of the invoices

that they matched items, they matched the invoices,

back number, etc, that we found that the invoices were actually false.

A crucial discovery which strongly suggested

that Ghosh was being less than truthful.

The amount of evidence that we had,

we didn't feel that we could allow Mr Ghosh to get away with this,

so we referred the case

to the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.

With evidence that Mr Ghosh was making

a fraudulent insurance claim,

IFED gladly took the case on.

Based on the evidence we had in front of us,

it was pretty clear that he was trying to claim twice

for something that happened once and that's fraud.

So we had to open a full investigation.

So, Ghosh was after a two for the price of one deal

on a break-in he'd suffered two years ago.

And he was determined this to make this alleged robbery appear legit.

Our investigations uncovered that not only was he using some invoices

to claim twice, some of them were invoices he'd made up himself.

He'd forged them.

The fake invoices Ghosh had created would ultimately seal his fate.

Making a false claim is a fraud in itself.

But also, forging documents is a separate offence in its own right.

At that point, we needed to move to arrest Mr Ghosh

to secure further evidence and get his account.

Under interview,

Ghosh admitted to supplying fake invoices to his insurers.

And fraudulently attempting to claim for items

he'd previously received payment for.

At court, faced with the overwhelming evidence,

Mr Ghosh pled guilty.

He is now a convicted criminal.

And as far as IFED were concerned, there was nothing opportunistic

about this attempted daylight robbery.

One of the aggravating factors of this is the lengths

that Mr Ghosh had gone to to defraud his insurer.

There is clear evidence that he'd thought about this

in the manufacturing and forging of these invoices,

so he'd taken a lot of thought and planning, ultimately, for nothing.

And for anyone who thinks that insurance fraud

is a minor misconduct rather than a major crime, well, think again.

Maybe because it is filling out some forms and, maybe, online,

people see it as different to walking into a supermarket,

picking up some food and just walking out the door, but it's not.

It's theft or, in this case, it's fraud.

Insurance fraud hits all of us in the pocket,

but more and more of these scammers and conmen

are being Claimed And Shamed.