Buzzfeed?
Second, off duty investigators have been working for years doing investigations for insurance companies. When I was in the fire service in the 1970s-80s, guys wanted to get into arson investigation cause you could make as much money on the side working for insurance companies as you could on the regular job.
Third, there's an incredible amount of insurance fraud. People get upside down on their house or car and torch it. Have their cars stolen. If insurance companies don't investigate fraud, rates will skyrocket.
Don’t commit fraud and you probably won’t have anything to worry about.
If someone has been sent to prison it is not the insurance company who sent him there, but a judge or jury.
I worked in the insurance industry most of my adult life, then I retired about three years ago. I handled a great many insurance fraud cases. The insurer doesn’t bring criminal charges against a suspect, the criminal justice system does.
Insurance fraud costs policyholders billions of dollars a year, which is reflected in higher premiums.
Two sides to the story. I worked Russian, Mafia and other ethnic groups who were well funded and coordinated who committed massive insurance fraud and funded other nefarious activities with their windfall. They had doctors, chiropractors, lawyers, cappers all working together to do these crimes. In one case alone, there were over 100 chiropractors, led by one individual, who padded their bills and even billed for patients not seen and who weren’t even in accidents. You know what that would do to your insurance rates?
Nothing new.
Insurance companies have been known to hire private detectives if they feel the claim is bad. Someone may be claiming their back pain is deliberating from an accident. But then the P.I. gets pictures of the guy doing activities without any pain. Torpedoes the case.
And that’s all perfectly legal.
Hi. Welcome to FR.
Some people here seem crude but they’re not. Me for example...
So without further adue, insurance companies have been hiring “dick’s” for insurance fraud since the Hartford began writing policies. Lloyds of London too. Police overtime can be rather lucrative.
5.56mm
There is a company here in KY that has gotten rich by getting people to pay for medical claims. It’s Rawlings, or something like that.
If you are at Christmas at your parents house and somehow slip and fall and twist your ankle, you then use your insurance to pay for the doctor bill. Pretty normal. Your insurance company will investigate and basically charge your parents (their homeowner’s insurance) for the medical bill, so their medical insurance gets reimbursed.
Think of it as a kind of low cost, institutionalized ambulance chasing, but they are doing it to reduce the medical insurance company’s exposure.
Nice post, thanks, would not have seen it without you.
This seems like a fairly well researched article. Probbaly worth reading.
It does not discuss as mentioned the real problem of insurance fraud, BUT does clearly acknowledge it; but that is OK because this article is about insurance fraud fraud, and it’s scary, I think.
In fact you would think you would have insurance against people deceitfully going after you for turning in an insurance claim (!), but it is conveniently a criminal complaint they are after, precisely so that liability insurance would not cover it.
They cited “at least a sevenfold return on investment” for the last 20 years on insurance industry efforts to fight fraud. With apparently little downside. On an older guy like the one in the article, their actions could basically usher him out of his life like he never expected.
The solution in part will be along the lines of making it criminal for an insurance company AND THE INDUSTRY “DEEP STATE” type individuals involved not to share exonerating and all information with the accused, PLUS “conflict of interest” type laws preventing them from being too directly involved.
The other part is just shining light on it as the article is doing. I sure will not do any business with the insurance company they use as the main example. I also would tend to pick one with an official policy of staying out of fraud investigations especially as far as paying police, etc.
So they find the ONE GUY who’s not committing insurance fraud and write up a big article about him. How about thousands, perhaps millions, who do commit the fraud, particularly in the inner cities where it’s basically a profession.
Insurance Co’s are the new home of left wing SJWs. I hope they all go belly up.
In many areas of insurance -- auto insurance being a perfect example -- the insurance industry has to operate under ridiculous state regulations that require them by law to insure people and property that they would never insure in a million if these companies had the power to make that decision themselves. So you end up with a population containing a number of stunted misfits who have business even getting behind the wheel of a car ... and insurance companies are legally obligated to insure them.
It should come as no surprise that insurance fraud is a problem. And on top of all that, the article even points out that insurance fraud is not a high priority for law enforcement. So think about how preposterous that is: The same government that compels an insurance company to sell an insurance policy to someone then turns around and decides that it isn't a big deal when the insured person rips the insurance company off.
And then that same state government decides that the insurance companies must insure drivers who are illegal aliens AND HAVE NO BUSINESS EVEN LIVING IN THIS COUNTRY AT ALL.
The amount of fraud out there is stunning and the fact is that bogus insurance claim drive up rates for everybody else
Especially as concerning Workmen’s Comp. insurance and disability claims
I didn’t read every word of the article, but I also didn’t see why they were so sure that he staged the theft of his guns. Did the insurance investigators find him trying to sell them on E-Bay or something?
Off duty cops work security? Doctor working second job as Doctor.
Lol. People ripping off insurance companies. What goes around comes around.
The few claims I have had to make to car or homeowner insurance over a number of decades have be pretty straight forward and I have no complaints. Been using State Farm for 42 years for both.
However, for about 25 years I had to carry individual health insurance plans and that my FRiends was an entirely different story. Back in the days of “usual and customary” bull sh1t I got screwed over plenty. Every legit claim was shorted at least 40% under the “usual and customary” trick. I had to threaten a class action lawsuit against Principle Mutual to get a legitimate surgery properly paid - they refused to provide any evidence of how they arrived at “usual and customary”. All I asked was that they show me three doctors in central Florida that would do the surgery at the rate they claimed was “usual and customary”. When I promised a lawsuit and subpoena for that info they quickly paid the claim. I also had to change carriers every year because they would give you a “good” rate for 12 months then double the premium at renewal. This happened repeatedly. It was SOP in the medical insurance industry. To paraphrase Moby Grape, I had murder in my heart for the insurance company.
Now I will say that in 2008 I got high deductible individual policies for the wife and I with Blue Cross and the policies and the few claims were handled just as promised. But all the policies/underwriters prior to that were nothing but legalized fraud IMO.
Not new. See “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar”.
CC
Insurance fraud hits the honest customers in the wallet...that is the whole concept of “shared risk”.
The only downside to the insurance industry funding state and local law enforcement is that the insurance fraud investigator continue to get paid (in PA) whenever there is a budget crisis. Everyone else in the AG’s office goes without pay, but since their salaries come from “outside” their checks continue. Good for them, bad for the rest.