A Red Rock, Ariz., man accused of posing as a lawyer in a $12,500 insurance scam was indicted on charges of fraud by an Arizona grand jury.
The man, Victor Paul Vasquez, 41, allegedly negotiated the settlement with State Farm Insurance Co. on behalf of a woman who was in a car accident, according to The Republic newspaper. The check was issued in the woman’s name, but Vasquez allegedly cashed the check and never provided the woman with any money, despite her owing $8,000 for medical expenses, according to the newspaper.
In 2008, he was issued a cease and desist order, forcing him to stop posing as a lawyer, the newspaper said.
A benefits cheat fraudulently claimed for disabilities while holding down a full-time job as a lorry loader, a court has heard.Video footage was shown as evidence.
Film which was acquired from the depot of transport firm TNT showed Mark Gittings, aged 41, from Cannock “doing everything an able-bodied man can do.”
Richard Dewsbery, prosecuting, told Stafford Crown Court that TNT, which is based in Wimblebury Road in Cannock, even made Gittings an instructor for manual lifting and handling techniques.
However, over a period of eight years, Gittings claimed disability living allowance and the higher rate mobility allowance as well as a carer’s allowance.
The total amount he fiddled from taxpayers was £35,627.
Former police detectives working for Hastings Direct have helped secure the six month conviction of a 41 year old teacher for insurance fraud.
‘Mr M’ from Worcestershire claimed that his £1500 Volvo had been stolen, when in fact he had crashed the vehicle after a night out drinking.
When he claimed with Hastings Direct for the car’s theft, the company’s team of former police officers investigated.
Initial inspection of his car revealed extensive accident damage, but no damage that would be expected in relation to its theft.
Hastings Direct then asked the Worcestershire police to investigate further and their forensic examination of the car determined that ‘Mr M’s’ DNA was evident on the car’s air bag, proving he had been driving at the time of the accident impact.
Paul Priestley, head of counter fraud, Hastings Direct, said: “We would like to thank the police and the courts for securing this conviction. There is a perception that insurance fraud does not hurt anyone, but in fact it hurts everyone financially.
A council which spends more than any other in Wales on private investigators says it has helped it save more than £6m fighting bogus compensation claims.
Figures obtained by BBC Wales show Caerphilly council spent a total of £99,995 over the past three years.
Carmarthenshire, which spent £95,752, said it was mainly used to help trace people owing large sums in council tax.
Eleven councils said they did not use private investigators as they had their own trained officers.
According to the figures obtained , the 22 local authorities in Wales spent just over £200,000 in the past three years on the services of private investigators.
Preventing fraud, serving court papers, monitoring licensed premises, and tracing debtors were among reasons for their use.
A West Dover woman has been sentenced to three years and a month in prison for defrauding Mutual of Omaha insurance company of nearly $1.4 million.
U.S. District Judge J. Garvan Murtha sentenced Sharon Johnson, 63, of West Dover Thursday. She had pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and mail fraud. As part of a plea agreement, she admitted obtaining more than $1 million in fraudulent benefits from the insurer.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Burlington, Mutual of Omaha discovered the fraud during a 2006 audit. An employee, Rachel Lenagh of Neola, Iowa, was found to have processed Johnson’s false claims. She pled guilty in Nebraska and was sentenced to two years in prison.
Beginning in 2001, Johnson filed claims for which there were no supporting medical bills; Lenagh paid the claims and received about $95,000 from Johnson in cash and gifts, the U.S. attorney in Nebraska said in 2009. He described the case as larger than most health care insurance frauds.
Ralph Brown, Jr., 41, of Bennington, pleaded guilty to second degree arson for torching the house in which he, his wife, and her boyfriend lived in. The state agreed to reduce a first degree arson charge Brown faced and drop additional charges of first degree arson, insurance fraud, conspiracy and second degree aggravated domestic assault.
The insurance money collected, Brown told police, was to go toward a medical procedure that would allow his wife to become pregnant.
His wife, Stacy Brown, 34, pleaded no contest in July to lying to police and was given a suspended sentence of 6 months to a year. Charges of arson with the intent to defraud an insurer, conspiracy and accessory before the fact, were dropped by the state.
Stacy’s 26-year-old boyfriend, Joseph Thomas, pleaded guilty to second degree arson and was given a suspended sentence of one to five years. The state agreed to drop a second arson charge and charges of conspiracy and insurance fraud.
Both Ralph and Thomas were both local volunteer firefighters.
A veteran Los Angeles police sergeant was arrested on suspicion of felony fraud after department officials said Thursday that he altered a note from his doctor allowing him to collect pay and stay off work beyond the time to which he was entitled.
Juan Fernandez, a 24-year veteran assigned to Mission Division, surrendered to authorities. The LAPD Professional Standards Bureau alleged several violations, including two felonies of workers’ compensation insurance fraud and insurance Fraud.
The sergeant was booked Wednesday at the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail in lieu of $30,000 bail. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of up to seven years in state prison, and/or a fine of up to $150,000.
“The sergeant will get his day in court,” said LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith. “But we have a very aggressive workers’ comp fraud unit that investigates any hint of fraud or abuse of the system.”
Fernandez began taking time off after filing a claim on May 13, 2010, the department said in a statement. He did not return to work until March 27, 2011. Citing confidentiality rules, LAPD declined to say what injury or illness led to the leave.
A supermarket sent a private detective to film one of its workers as she recovered from a serious back injury sustained when she slipped on a broken egg in the store warehouse.
Grandmother Irene Heslop was left with a suspected spinal fracture after falling on to a concrete floor at the Asda store where she had been employed as a bakery assistant for seven years.
Mrs Heslop was left unable to walk long distances or lift heavy equipment following the fall and approached bosses to ask to return to work on lighter duties, but was told no such work was available.
Around the same time, 15 months after the fall, the retail giant twice sent a spy to prove Mrs Heslop, now 65, was fit to work by filming her as she went about her daily chores.
The grandmother-of-two didn’t realise she had been followed until the footage was revealed three years after she was injured at the store in Hulme, Greater Manchester, during a compensation battle which saw her awarded a total of £27,000 for her injuries and loss of earnings.
A PRIVATE investigation firm has been branded “Scrooge” after offering to spy on compensation claimants over Christmas.
Surveillance Central at Toowong in Brisbane has emailed law firms offering “festive season surveillance” on injury compensation claimants.
The offer is aimed at lawyers representing insurers or firms sued for compensation. “It’s Scrooge-like,” said personal injury lawyer Ian Brown of Maurice Blackburn.
The Surveillance Central email says: “The holiday period often provides some tremendous surveillance opportunities.”
The investigator has offered to get footage of claimants putting up Christmas lights, going shopping and to parties and doing yard clean-ups.
The husband and wife postal workers at a North Carolina mail-sorting plant were out of work and collecting disability benefits when they first came under surveillance.
Acting on an anonymous tip, agents with the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General went undercover for two months. They used video cameras to document the activities of the couple, who had claimed they could not work because sitting more than 15 minutes caused pain and swelling, records show.
The agents followed the husband and wife either alone or together driving, gambling and mowing the lawn, among other activities. The couple faced criminal charges and, after a three-day trial in January, convictions for crimes involving workers’ compensation benefits.
The case wasn’t unusual. The Postal Service inspector general is one of a handful of investigative agencies whose use of video surveillance to target disability fraud was singled out in a recent congressional report. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, disclosed the surveillance practices as part of a broader review of workers’ compensation fraud controls at a half-dozen agencies across government.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has an internal affairs unit to review potential fraud and make referrals to investigators, who in turn conduct video surveillance, according to the GAO.
The halls of Michigan’s state capitol will be swarmed with people In the next few months looking to change the way state residents buy auto insurance. The bills they’ll discus – depending on one’s point of view – will either give consumers more choice about the levels of auto coverage they receive or gut a unique system of “no-fault” insurance that offers limitless coverage for injuries sustained in auto accidents.
Amid all this discussion about such insurance industry arcana as “personal injury protection caps” and “medical fee schedules,” one major thing seems to be getting lost: the enormous extent to which fraud increases Michigan’s auto insurance costs and the poor job the state does in fighting it.
Right now, the average Michigan consumer pays about $950 per year per vehicle for auto insurance ($5,000 a year in Detroit)—when rates in neighboring states average $650. Less than half of the $300 difference comes from the fee assessed for the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association that pays out for medical claims covered by health insurance and government programs everywhere else (the crux of debates in the legislature).
The rest results from other factors, and everything indicates fraud ranks first among them.
The National Insurance Crime Bureau reports Michigan, the eighth largest state, has more possibly fraudulent insurance claims than either California (the biggest state) or Texas (the second biggest). The number of such claims has more than doubled since 2008. Although the state’s overall medical costs are just about average for the Midwest, the average cost of automobile-related medical claims, about $30,000, is twice what it is in any other state.
Sailing across the Atlantic would be a gruelling task for the fittest of men.
But Graham Axford managed the feat in his private yacht – despite claiming he was unfit to work because of a bad back.
The 57-year-old tackled some of the world’s most dangerous waters while claiming thousands of pounds in incapacity benefit over a 15-year period.
He was caught out when it emerged he had made a month-long voyage from America to the Azores.
The benefits claimant also lived in a council house in Croydon, South London, despite part-owning a farmhouse in Normandy. Mr Axford was apparently exposed living a double-life by a BBC Panorama investigation, which airs tonight.
The keen sailor started receiving incapacity benefit in 1996, after injuring his back in a motorcycle accident.
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