It’s bad enough these days having to fork out a small fortune for car insurance and one of the things that can badly affect premiums is the insurance scammers. Thankfully sometimes these guys get caught out with the glorious dashcams which are becoming more popular due to apps being easily available for smart phones.
This is a classic scam as going into the back of someone it is almost always considered the fault of the vehicle behind. So the scammers have figured out a way to get people, stop on a busy road and reverse into the car behind. As you can see the scammer then asks for $500 to fix his car or he is going to call the police. Then it’s his word against yours unless like this guy you get it all on camera:
Here is another example of the same scam; again the best bit is when the scammers are notified of the presence of a dashcam. Fail.
As for personal favourites this has to be top of the pile for sheer comedy value. To a third party witness from a distance and according to the victim he has just been run over on this crossing by the car. Thanks to the use of the dashcam this scammer is shown to have all the acting skills of a faking footballer:
The scams carried out are not always quite so simple and in some cases can be part of a huge network of crime. In this case a dashcam captured a more complicated set-up involving two cars causing a small truck to crash into the back of them. The police found in that the ‘crash for cash’ scheme here were involved in more than 120 incidents worth potential more than £3m of insurance fraud.
As with the case caught in the UK here is another example of what is known as the ‘swoop and squat’ scam involving two cars forcing a van to crash into the back of one of them.
Aside from getting a dashcam or dashcam app yourself remember that alongside driving defensively if you are ever involved in a collision of this nature make sure to write down all details of vehicles and people involved and to get insurance details from the other parties.
Draw as many details as possible of the accident and how it happened and take photos if possible of both the road layout and the damage to yours and the other parties vehicle.
Where able to, see if you can get the details of a third party witness who may help if issues arrive over who is at fault in the accident. Bear in mind that just because someone has admitted fault on the scene does not necessarily mean that it’s what they are going to be telling their insurance company when they get home.
In some cases where an accident may be obscure or someone has sustained an injury then the police should be informed and a report will be created with a reference number for your insurance company.
To fight the insurance fraudsters make sure to get as many details as possible and to have everything kept together in a file as cases can go on for months and being able to re-call exactly what happened will give you the evidence to fight for the truth.
