TORONTO, Dec. 20 /CNW/ - Canada's home, car and business insurers todayreleased their annual Top Ten Insurance Crimes list, highlighting some of thestrangest and most audacious insurance frauds and auto theft cases uncoveredby insurance investigators this year. This year's list includes the usual lineup of con artists who try to make a fast buck by duping both innocentbystanders and insurance companies. The list is intended to raise awareness of the most ridiculous crimesconcocted by insurance criminals. "It never fails to amaze me the extent to which people will go to defraudthe system," says Rick Dubin, Vice-President, Investigations, Insurance Bureauof Canada (IBC). "Insurance crime is serious and costly and makes victims ofus all. A conservative estimate is that insurance crime costs Canadianinsurers and their policyholders about $3 billion a year. "We cannot fight these crimes alone. Many of the schemes on this listwere brought to light thanks to tips from Good Samaritans. We applaud theefforts of individuals who refuse to sit back and watch others cheat thesystem." To make it easier for Canadians to report auto theft, insurance fraud,staged auto collisions and other crimes related to insurance, Canada's home,car and business insurers have launched a national insurance crime TIPS line.Anyone with information about a possible insurance crime can call the toll-free TIPS line at 1-877-IBC-TIPS (422-8477) or submit a tip on-line atwww.ibc.ca . All tips are kept confidential. Take the time and report insurancecrime. Insurance Bureau of Canada is the national trade association of theprivate property and casualty insurance industry. It represents the companiesthat provide more than 90% of the non-government home, car and businessinsurance in Canada. To view news releases and information, visit the mediasection of IBC's website at www.ibc.ca . 1. Too Many Encores His acting was quite good, and he also doubled as his own stuntman, buteventually his performance would earn him a very bad review. The man's act wassimple and convincing. He would hang out in a parking lot until he spotted awoman or a senior backing out of a space. He would then step behind the car,bang the trunk with his fist and fall to the ground in apparent pain. Atfirst, various insurers would settle his claim, so he gave a repeatperformance every two weeks. He put on a total of eleven shows until a sharp-eyed adjuster gave him the thumbs down. After an investigation, his nextappearance was in court, where he received a bad review and was ordered torepay his victims. His acting career is over. 2. Pirate Shipping Stolen cars are one of Canada's fastest growing exports. Every year, anestimated 20,000 of them are loaded into shipping containers and sentoverseas. One crook thought he'd try to cash in on both ends of this illicittrade. First, he arranged to export his brand new high-end vehicle to his homecountry in Europe. Ninety days later, he filed an insurance claim in Canadasaying his car had been stolen. Problem was, his car had already been seizedat a port in Belgium along with two other stolen Canadian cars found in thesame container. Investigators were naturally suspicious of a theft reportconcerning a vehicle that had already spent weeks impounded in Belgium. Theywondered why it had taken him so long to realize it was missing. So did theinsurer. Claim denied. 3. Fender Bender Fraud The man thought the damage to his car looked relatively minor. He'daccidentally scraped the left front quarter panel as he was pulling out of aparking space. So he was shocked to see the enormous bill and list ofreplacement parts - including a new front grill and cooling system - that thebody shop was sending to the insurance company. The insurer agreed somethingseemed amiss. During the investigation, a sharp-eyed appraiser recognized thatthe damaged parts that the body shop employees claimed had been removed fromthe man's car were actually from another vehicle. Fooling around with somebodyelse's parts can backfire. The body shop is currently being investigated bypolice. 4. The Chop Shop King He was a very wealthy man, and when insurance investigators and policelooked into his car dealership and body shop operations it was easy to seewhy. He ran two bustling chop shops - illegal garages where stolen cars arestripped for parts - and he had a significant side business that alteredvehicle identification numbers. When police moved in, they seized 40 stolenvehicles with a cash value totalling $1 million. In fact, the case was so bigthat the trial took 119 days and involved 190 witnesses. When the gavel camedown, the Chop Shop King was removed from his throne, sent to jail to serve asix-year sentence and ordered to pay a $774,000 fine. As he pronounced thesentence, the judge referred to an IBC-commissioned study that highlighted thesocial costs of car theft and said, in effect, that it's a crime that costsall Canadians. 5. Field of Schemes It began as a routine auto theft claim. The man reported that his high-end pickup truck had been stolen, and he collected $68,000 from hisinsurer. Months later, insurance investigators received a tip that led them toa farm owned by the man's mother. There, in the middle of a field, theyspotted the truck - what was left of it. The man was selling it off piece bypiece. The wheels were already gone along with a range of other parts. Theinvestigators seized what remained, the insurer launched a lawsuit, and theman was charged with public mischief, fraud and obstructing a police officer. 6. Phantom Injuries The "victims" weren't even in the car when it crashed, but they filedinjury claims totalling over $200,000. Turns out the fraudsters had receivedsome expert coaching. A paralegal had recruited them and led them down acrooked trail. They were sent to a clinic - also a partner in the crime - forassessments and treatment of injuries that didn't exist, and the claims weresent in. The whole scam was working fine until one of the "victims" revealedthe truth. In the end, the only thing that really crashed was a conspiracy ofgreed. 7. Too Good To Be True It looked like a bargain to the car owners wanting a deal on insurance.Salespeople at a few car dealerships and other businesses were offering aninsurance special. They were charging $500 - a "finder's" or "consulting" fee -to arrange insurance with a broker they claimed would save the car owners lotsof money on premiums. The scam artists were intentionally putting bogusinformation on the applications so that customers would be put into a cheaperrate group. However, because the policies were purchased under falsepretenses, they were invalid. IBC received a tip that led to the discovery anddismantling of this scam, which involved hundreds of policies and finder'sfees amounting to about $1 million. The insurance company has since offerednew policies, based on the correct information, to the duped customers. 8. Persistence Doesn't Pay The ringleader didn't have to go far from home to find recruits to joinher gang of crooks. At first she persuaded friends and family to join her instaging car accidents and filing false claims. Business was good, so shedecided to expand by signing up her neighbours. Some of them took her up onher offer to make a quick, crooked buck, but she got greedier and greedier andneeded more and more recruits. Eventually, she got so desperate that she beganrepeatedly pestering neighbours who had already turned her down. Finally,someone became annoyed enough to secretly record her pitch. It wasn't longbefore she was singing a different tune to police and Crown attorneys. 9. The Invisible Workers Investigators noticed that the employees of one particular firm seemed tobe very unlucky. A great many of them were getting involved in car accidentsand filing injury claims. That was news to the company's owner and, when hewas shown the long list of his unfortunate workers, the scam began to unravel.The owner scanned the names and said none of the people had ever worked forhim. In fact, he had never even heard of them. It turned out that a rogueparalegal was the driving force behind a staged accident ring and, to boostthe compensation claims of his "victims," he had forged their employmentforms. The paralegal's out of work now, too. 10. Very Bad Advice A man injured in a collision decided to get some cheap legal advice andassistance from a paralegal. He certainly got what he paid for. The paralegalhad the man sign a pile of legal forms without explaining what they meant and,all the while, assured him that he would look after him. The paralegal went onto negotiate on the man's behalf with the insurance company without tellinghis client, then forged the man's signature on the resulting cheque and cashedit. When confronted by his client, the paralegal shamelessly denied anywrongdoing. He continued to deny it during his trial and even after he wasconvicted.

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