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It’s Fraud Prevention Month and SGI is marking the occasion with some wacky stories of insurance fraud.
The company shared the top five stories of the past year in a news release Wednesday.
Running into an old friend
A man said his vehicle was hit by a woman who had blown through a stop sign.
The two people claimed not to know each other.
Police initially charged the woman for the crash, but after looking into it further, they began to get suspicious that something wasn’t quite right.
SGI’s Special Investigation Unit (SIU) got ahold of video of the crash.
The man had stopped in the intersection, giving the woman enough time to speed up and hit him.
The investigation also revealed that the two knew each other, and had staged the crash.
Denying the claim saved SGI $7,000.
Technology to the rescue
A woman claimed her brand-new 2021 Camaro was stolen.
Police managed to track down the vehicle, thanks to help from the OnStar navigation and safety system.
It was found with a banged-up front end.
The woman filed an insurance claim, but things got suspicious when SGI learned she had both key fobs … which was the only way to start the car.
When SGI told her it would be checking with OnStar for technical data, she decided not to go forward with the claim.
It would have been worth $14,000 had she been successful in the scheme.
Into the drink
A woman claimed her daughter had been in a crash with what seemed like a reasonable explanation.
The daughter had apparently swerved to avoid a deer on a gravel road while it was raining, then ended up sliding into a nearby dugout.
But once the SIU checked out the area, it realized the dugout was actually a water reservoir for a town, and it was hundreds of feet away from the road.
It was also paved, not gravel.
She would have had to drive through a town park to make it into the reservoir.
The daughter had also apparently been drinking at the time of the crash.
The denied claim saved SGI $65,000.
Car of his dreams
Rather than saving up his own money, one man tried to get his hands on a vintage muscle car through fraud.
The man claimed his classic car was stolen, but had almost no information.
He didn’t have any pictures of it from the last 15 years, any receipts or any financial information about insurance.
The SIU even talked to neighbours and mechanics who had supposedly worked on the vehicle, and none of them remembered it.
The one photo he submitted turned out to be a stock photo from the U.S.
The busted claim saved the insurance agency $20,000.
It doesn’t add up
Finally, a woman filed a claim saying her home had been robbed of $70,000 worth of property.
There were many obvious red flags up from the start.
She had just bought insurance two weeks before. On top of that, the SIU did a financial check and found out there wasn’t any way she had the money to pay for all the things she claimed.
On top of that, the SIU visited the property and found out it wasn’t nearly big enough to hold all the items.
SGI promptly denied the claim.
