Staged Accidents are a tried and true method of organized insurance crime. In 2020, more and more fraudsters have been turning to the classic “crash ring” to make a quick buck. By claiming to have phantom soft tissue injuries and extensive vehicle damages after an “accident,” involved parties are able to collect and redistribute insurance payments with one another.
Crash ring scammers successfully defraud insurance companies by denying knowing each other upon investigation and relying on runners to “provide treatments” for faked injuries. Recently, scammers have also leveraged the COVID-19 pandemic to their advantage - many have stage accidents on empty roads during social distancing periods, and accident parties have been refusing hospital care out of “fear of contracting COVID-19.”
When crash ring members get away with their crimes, automobile insurance companies are forced to pay fraudsters and raise premiums. Automobile insurance companies lose a staggering tens of billions of dollars annually to staged accidents, as both claims rates and loss-per-claimant figures also continue to rise each year. Uncovering connections between fraud ring members, therefore, is becoming more and more invaluable to insurance investigations.
Your investigators can employ Pipl SEARCH to uncover associations between potential crash ring participants. By typing the collected phone number of any or all accident parties, you can quickly track an identity’s public online and offline footprints to uncover associations. For further detail on how Pipl SEARCH can be leveraged in your “crash ring” investigation, click here to read our Investigate Whitepaper.
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