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By ROBIN KNEPPER
Oh, what people will do to get something for nothing.
A guy in Spotsylvania County with no insurance has an accident that damages his car. He goes home, calls an insurance company and buys a collision policy. The next day he calls the insurance company and files a claim for the accident he says just happened.
"That sort of thing is the majority of my work," says Special Agent Dennis Dodson of the Insurance Fraud Unit of the Virginia State Police. "I've known of people who have an accident, call and get insurance and call back within an hour to make a claim."
The man in Spotsylvania was convicted of obtaining money under false pretenses. The misdemeanor charge got him probation.
More elaborate, and rare, was a plan earlier this year by two Quantico-based Marines to collect money for a 1986 Corvette stolen in Stafford County. The car was taken to Spotsylvania and torched. It had been purchased for $5,000 but was insured for $28,000 only 10 days before the reported theft and arson.
Thanks to the Spotsylvania fire marshal's office, the insurance company and the state police's Insurance Fraud Unit, the pair didn't collect. In October they were convicted of attempted grand larceny, conspiracy and attempting to defraud and were sentenced to 61/2 years in prison, with all but six months suspended.
"In Orange, a man got paid twice for one accident," Dodson recalled. "He was rear-ended in a parking lot, and after his claim was paid by his insurance company, he didn't get the car fixed.
"A few weeks later he was hit again, this time by a woman. He told the woman that his car had an old injury, so no accident report was filed. He then filed a claim with the car owner's insurance company for the same damage. Because no accident report had been filed, the insurance company knew something was wrong and investigated," Dodson said.
According to Orange Commonwealth's Attorney Diana Wheeler, the man was convicted of obtaining money under false pretenses and got probation.
Vehicle accidents are worked by law enforcement agencies, and they file dated accident reports. The National Insurance Crime Bureau maintains a database of all insurance claims. All that's needed to put information together is investigators who smell a rat.
Investigators for the insurance companies are usually the first to get a whiff. If they find or suspect fraud, Dodson or another state police fraud investigator will be called on to investigate.
If the state fraud investigators find evidence of a crime, the case is turned over to the local commonwealth's attorney for prosecution. Wheeler received an award from the state police last year for successfully prosecuting three such cases.
According to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, a national group of insurance companies, fraud adds as much as $1,000 per family to the yearly cost of goods and services. In Virginia, state police say, residents pay between $200 and $1,000 each year in additional premiums due to all types of fraudulent insurance claims.
In an attempt to lessen the impact of fraudulent property- and casualty-insurance claims, the state passed legislation in 1998 that created "Stamp Out Fraud," the Virginia State Police's insurance fraud program.
Since then, agents with the unit have investigated more than 1,280 cases and made about 590 arrests for fraud and related offenses. Last year, they investigated more than 275 cases and made nearly 100 arrests.
In 2004, a reward program was started that will pay up to $25,000 for information that leads to the arrest, but not necessarily the conviction, of a person suspected of insurance fraud. State insurance companies pay 0.05 percent of all casualty- and property-insurance premiums to the state to fund both the fraud-investigation program and the reward program.
Not all suspicious cases come from the insurance companies. The state police will investigate tips from the public on such things as faked injuries that allow someone to illegally collect worker's compensation, people working while collecting disability payments, faked auto accidents and other cases that come under the umbrella of casualty and property claims.
According to insurance fraud program spokeswoman Pam Jewell, $11,500 has been paid out in rewards so far. Payouts start at $1,000, for a loss to the insurance company of less than $25,000. They can range as high as $25,000 if the loss exceeds $1 million. The largest payout so far has been $5,000.
"The amount of the reward is based on the amount of loss to the insurance company," Jewell said. "There are also criteria that must be met, including the importance of the information we receive, the nature of the crime, the risk to the source and the importance of the witness to the prosecution."
ON THE NET: stampoutfraud.com
To reach ROBIN KNEPPER:
Email: rknepper@earthlink.net
