Having practiced personal injury law for over 20 years, I can tell you that fraud for personal injury law claims does exist. But, it does not exist to the extent the insurance industry wants you to believe. The numbers for what you and I believe to be fraud are lower because what the insurance industry accounts as fraud is more all encompassing that you would suspect in order to inflate those fraud statistics in order to justify rate hikes. Some classic examples of fraud for personal injury cases include things that would come to mind when you think of personal injury insurance fraud.
Staged Car Accidents
Fake, or staged car accidents, in order to recover money and benefits in personal injury cases are a real thing. But, fraudsters are really playing with fire with these sort of cases. After a car accident happens, people call the police. The police investigate car accidents. And if the police don’t come to the scene of a car accident, then it’s expected that the parties which are involved in the car accident report the collision to the accident self reporting collision centre. It’s not wise for a fraudster to voluntarily call the police after their scheme, but this is exactly what is supposed to happen. The police can sometimes detect the fraud at first site. Insurance companies are also very good at detecting staged car accidents. They have their own investigators to look in to claims which don’t pass the sniff test so to say. This is not to suggest that every car accident gets investigated by an internal fraud team at an insurance company. But, when things don’t line up, the insurers can sense it and will then do what they need to do in order to look in to the suspected fraud.