ALBANY, N.Y. - Investigators across the country are trying new tactics to crack down on the old problem of auto insurance fraud. The tools to combat the crime from health insurance fraud mills in New York to “swoop-and-squat” schemes in California include wiretaps, undercover agents and prosecutors who view auto fraud as organized crime.

In 2001, New York Gov. George Pataki appointed state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer as special counsel to investigate the fraud that has helped drive up New Yorkers' auto insurance premiums to second highest in the nation, second only to New Jersey.

New York Deputy Attorney General Peter Pope, who oversees 100 lawyers and 100 investigators statewide as the head of the office's criminal division, said that going after street-level perpetrators isn't enough. Instead, he's taken an organized crime approach, using wiretaps, undercover agents and investigative grand juries to nab doctors, lawyers and the “silent owners” of medical fraud mills that bilk the insurance industry out of $25 billion to $30 billion a year.

In many cases syndicates running fraud operations have been charged under New York's Organized Crime Control Act, a state statute used to go after larger criminal enterprises. Perpetrators are often charged with enterprise corruption, a major felony calling for longer and mandatory prison time of up to 25 years.

The New York law is patterned after the 1970 federal racketeering statute, known as RICO, to combat organized crime including the Mafia and gangs in several states.

Frank Scafidi of the National Insurance Crime Bureau said fraud forces higher rates for everyone, though he and others say there are no reliable estimates of how much it adds to the average consumer's bill nationwide.

In New York City in March 2004, 11 people and seven companies were charged in connection with a scheme that prosecutors said defrauded insurance carriers out of $1 million. Doctors, lawyers and others were accused of soliciting accident victims to be treated at IK Medical, a clinic run by Dr. Irina Kimyagarova.

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