Suspicious car fires or arson rise 27% in the first quarter compared with a year earlier as owners seek a payoff.
Reporting from Sacramento - Motorists unable to afford payments on pricey cars and gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles in this recession are turning to a time-tested financing solution: matches.
Insurance cheats are torching their vehicles in remote deserts. They're pushing them off cliffs. They're sinking them in lakes or ditching them in Mexico in the hopes of getting their policies to pay off, fraud investigators say.
Nationwide, suspicious vehicle fires or arson increased 27% in the first quarter of this year compared with a year earlier, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, an industry-supported agency that investigates all types of insurance fraud. So-called owner give-ups -- cars intentionally destroyed or abandoned -- jumped 24%.
Barbecuing a Beamer is one of the more dramatic types of suspected insurance fraud that's increasing in this economic downturn, the deepest in more than half a century. But it's not the only one. Suspicious personal injury slip-and-fall claims increased 60% in the first quarter; staged car accident cases were up 34% and commercial property fire/arson cases jumped 76%.
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My grandpa is still paying on his Model T from the first depression.
ReplyDeleteI remember when insurance was immoral because it's God's will what happens and only cheaters try to pay someone to pay them if something bad happens cuz God willed it upon them.
ReplyDeleteCheaters.
I really don't like people who do things like that. Let's leave it at that.
ReplyDeleteIn the old cartoons those in life insurance are depicted as opportunistic salesmen. Nowadays most people own about 5 different kinds of insurance (home, car, health, dental, life). Just think if all of those premiums went straight towards the actual betterment of life instead of through the profiteers first on the order of billions and billions of dollars.
ReplyDelete