The Importance of this department

Take a minute and ask yourself when you think of insurance fraud what do you think of? For most, I would believe most think of paperwork and just simply dishonest people just trying to make extra money without harming people.


Yes it is very common for people to simply destroy their own property or say their was more damage to their vehicle after an accident then there really was. These cases don't physically affect other individuals. Unfortunately their is also another side of insurance fraud that is committed by the worst type of people who have no regard for others. I will give an example of one case that is being worked by one of the detectives.


A basic summary of this case would be the suspect was driving his car down one of the major streets in Sacramento during rush hour with the intent of causing an accident. In order to accomplish this he would wait in stop-and-go traffic and cut into lanes when gaps appeared, an then slamming on his breaks unnecessarily in attempt to cause the car behind him to rear end him. After unsuccessfully attempting this maneuver on different cars, the suspect finally got a car to hit him. The car that hit him was an elderly couple in their 70s. The man was only in a minor accident in which minor damage was visible but did not leave his car and requested medical attention when others went to check on the accident. The elderly couple were luckily not harmed in the situation.


Luckily in this case, one of the individuals who failed to run into the back of the suspects car recognized what was going on and when he witnessed the accident he pulled over to check on the scene and give his statement to the responding officers. In this situation the responding officers do not have the proper evidence to give any citations or make any arrests. The suspect is free to go and file his insurance claim that he was hit and that the elderly couple was at fault. The insurance company of the elderly couple is the agency that sent us the case file to review. Case still pending


Now this isn't an uncommon occurrence. Staged accidents and involving innocent people in the ploy of collecting money through insurance fraud happens quite often. Imagine if the elderly couple had gotten hurt, then imagine it was your grandparents or your parents that were hurt. This is just one of the important reasons investigating and reporting insurance fraud is so important. Insurance fraud isn't just a financial issue to society but a criminally negligent and violent issue as well.