How Can You Prevent Auto Insurance Fraud?

Insurance Fraud in America is becoming an epidemic. I will discuss several of the more prevalent auto insurance scams that are found in the industry currently. I do this in hopes that you can spot these frauds and then prevent them from occurring to yourself or other people. All they do is make the insurance of the right and true go up.

In today’s world one of the more popular insurance scams defrauding us involves the actual insurance and auto accidents. If I need to be specific then I will have to say staged accidents – fakes – rigged. These little “plays” have become incredibly elaborate and complex to the point of involving teams of individuals and more than one “mark” car. There are various styles of these types of frauds of which include:

The first one to cover is known as the “swoop and squat” which involves three cars. Two of the cars are piloted by the scammers and the 3rd is the unsuspecting victim or “mark”. The driver in the “squat” car puts himself in front of the victim’s car and the “swoop” car pulls in front of the squat car to intentionally cut off the squat vehicle – this action allows the squat car to slam on his breaks which means that usually the victim can’t react fast enough and slams into the squat car. The swoop car continues on – its job complete. As far as the victim is concerned the swoop car caused the accident but since they vanished into thin air the victim is stuck paying for car repairs and injury claims.

The side swipe scam happens at busy intersections that have two left hand turning lanes. The scammer positions his car in the outer left lane and when the victim’s car enters the outer turn lane the criminal swipes him. In order to have success at this fraud the criminal scouts the intersection out to ensure its busy and that drifting can occur.

The Panic Stop is very common. This scam involves an old car filled with passengers. The car is driven in front of the mark’s car – one of the passengers will look out the rear window at the victim’s car and will look for any signs of distraction such as answering the cell phone, looking down for brief moment, turning the radio station or lighting a cigarette. Any possible situation where the drive can take his eyes off the road will work. When his action is spotted the driver of the scam car is notified and the brakes are pressed. The victim will claim they stopped short but it won’t matter and he will have to pay out for car damages andpersonal injury claims for every person in the car.

These criminals are the scum of the Earth. They figure they are not hurting anyone but a big company. The fact is it that they are hurting everyone. Every insurance company is made to pay fraudulent claims and our rates go up due to it.

Unfortunately, the only way to avoid being scammed like this is to be cautious of any vehicle in front of you – obey all traffic laws and if someone in front of you is suspect increase your distance. These scams can only work if you are close enough to make it plausible.