On the very same day that eight men were arrested on Long Island for intentionally causing road accidents to scam insurance companies out of more than $1 million, “Alice’s Bill,” a measure to make staged accidents a standalone crime in New York passed the State Senate, the drivers group New Yorkers Stand Against Auto Insurance Fraud (NYSAIF) today reported.
A Staten Island woman was among 16 suspects who hoped to score insurance paydays by staging vehicular crashes in the borough and Brooklyn, said authorities.
A day after the Justice Department announced the bust of a massive, $275 million auto fraud ring in New York, the New York State Trial Lawyers continue to block legislation in Albany to crack down on these criminal enterprises, the driver advocacy group New Yorkers State Against Auto Insurance Fraid (NYSAIF) today charged.
Staged car accidents and other auto insurance scams have become a “cottage industry” in states like New York and Florida, with organized criminal gangs and crooked medical facilities bilking hundreds of millions of dollars from insurance companies and hiking rates for innocent drivers. The problem is outlined in this television report released last night from CBS News.
nefarious – and pointedly obnoxious – cartoon character called “Frankie the Fraudster” was today named a 2012 spokesman for New Yorkers Stand Against Insurance Fraud (NYSAIF), an organization of drivers fighting rampant auto insurance fraud in the Empire State. The so-called “Fraud Tax” has cost New Yorkers more than $1 billion in higher auto premiums over the past five years. Drivers here pay 53% more for auto insurance on average than other Americans. “Frankie the Fraudster” personifies the thousands of criminals at work every day, crashing into innocent drivers and running up fraudulent medical bills as a way to scam New York’s loophole-ridden “No Fault Insurance” system.
Their first attempt at deliberately ramming their vehicles into one another on a Bronx street last summer did not sufficiently damage the cars. So the suspects – nine of them spread out in three vehicles – tried again, this time backing into each other in what the authorities say was a criminal version of demolition derby. When the car crashes were through, the suspects called the police to have accident reports logged. They all sought $39,000 worth of medical treatment for various injuries they claimed to have suffered.
He witnessed a truck crash — but really saw a huge payday, cops said. A Bronx driver reaped an insurance windfall by pretending he was involved in a wreck between a tractor-trailer and a car near the Triborough Bridge — but surveillance video caught him in his lie.
VIDEO: “About one in five no-fault claims in the New York City area shows evidence of fraud,” said Robert Hartwig of the Insurance Information Institute. “In other words, the claim itself may have been entirely contrived. In New York state alone we are looking at a quarter of a billion dollars in no-fault fraud.”
