PI Brief Update

Fraud Rings: How to Identify and Investigate - Andrew Mckie, Clerksroom

15/02/14. Chapter 3 of 'RTA Allegations of Fraud in a Post-Jackson Era: The Handbook' by Andrew Mckie. A fraud ring may be broadly defined as a group of one or more road traffic accidents which share a common dominator as part of the alleged fraud, and it may be the accident management company, the hire company, the storage company, the Claimant, a group of addresses. The Defendant’s insurer, will seek to investigate, a group of accidents together which have similar evident circumstances, and the links may be through one or more of the above denominators.

The last few years, this type of fraud has become more prolific and now within Defendant Solicitors and insurers, there are dedicated teams of claims handlers and Lawyers dealing with such claims. The insurers’ internal systems will often be geared towards spotting the signs of a fraud ring, and then it is often the case that more cases are brought into the fraud ring investigation, as the indicators become clearer. More often than not, a fraud ring will involve the same type of fraud, i.e. there may be a group of accidents which have all the hallmarks of a staged or contrived accident, and/or they may be a group of accidents linked through slam on or induced accident scenario. More often than not, when a fraud ring is being investigated, it will...

Image ©iStockphoto.com/Mark-W-R

Read more (PIBULJ subscribers only)..., or click below to purchase the book.