Courts in Liverpool have been busier than usual this week after no less than 33 people appeared before judges in connection with an alleged “Crash for Cash” car insurance scam. The hearings are the culmination of a Merseyside Police and Insurance Fraud Bureau investigation lasting three years.
The 33 men and women were accused of staging “fake” road traffic accidents at a number of different locations across Merseyside and the Northwest to profit from insurance policy payouts. All the crashes targeted the same insurance firm, Allianz Insurance, which filed the complaint with the authorities after it received a suspiciously high number of claims made by people connected to the same company.
Amongst the charges levied at those involved was the offence of Conspiracy to Defraud as well as associated offences. The fraudsters are alleged to have made large sums of money from their involvement in the staged accidents. As part of the operation officers from Merseyside Police made raids on three addresses in the city in October 2007 and arrested 3 women and a man.
With fraudulent car crash claims costing the insurance industry around £2bn a year and adding around 5% to the cost of insuring a car, it is not surprising that insurance companies have their own specialist teams set up to catch organised fraud of this type. As a firm of solicitors acting on behalf of thousands of legitimate car accident victims every year, Camps Solicitors has from time to time come across claims which we believe to be fraudulent. It is our duty as solicitors to report any fraudulent claims as suspected money laundering.
However, if you have been involved in a genuine accident and you would like legal advice as to whether you can make a claim for compensation, then we may well be able to help you.
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