Jail for crash for cash insurance scammer

Insurance fraud has been soaring over recent years, and one of the scams that some fraudsters have developed is to have accidents on purpose, making them the fault of the other driver, and then claiming tens of thousands of pounds in insurance money.

This sort of crime is a growing trend in the world of insurance, and authorities are now clamping down on this type of insurance fraud, with one man having been jailed recently for causing crashes so that he could claim insurance

One of the various tactics of twenty four year old Mohammed Patel was to disengage his brake lights so that the drivers behind him would not know when he was going to brake. They would then go into the back of him at a speed that would not prove serious to his health but would be fast enough to cause damage and give him cause to claim for whiplash, enabling him to claim thousands of pounds from the other driver’s insurance company.

He tended to pick on female drivers that were elderly, as he believed that they were least likely to cause any fuss. The various staged accidents that he took part in netted him nearly £50,000 and cost the insurance industry over £1.5 million.

The prosecutor in the case stated: ‘Mohammed Patel staged the road traffic accidents. He drove cars on to the roundabout and then stopped them so abruptly the vehicle behind could not avoid a collision. He did this because of the widely held belief that the person who drives into the rear of someone else is in the wrong and they will admit liability.’

The judge stated: ‘Decent motorists will be disgusted. This kind of fraud costs the industry £1.9bn and this adds, we are told, in relation to motor premiums, about £49 on every single motorist’s insurance premium. The innocent drivers in these staged collisions may have suffered injury, shock and distress and, of course, depending on the claim, they lost their no claims bonus.’