22 Facts About Insurance fraud

1.

Insurance fraud is any act committed to defraud an insurance process.

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2.

Insurance fraud has existed since the beginning of insurance as a commercial enterprise.

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3.

Insurance fraud poses a significant problem, and governments and other organizations try to deter such activity.

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4.

An epigram by the Roman poet Martial provides a clear evidence the phenomenon of insurance fraud was already known in the Roman Empire during the First Century AD:.

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5.

Insurance fraud contracts provide both the insured and the insurer with opportunities for exploitation.

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6.

For example, drug dealers who have entered insurance fraud think it's safer and more profitable than working street corners.

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7.

The most common forms of insurance fraud are re-framing a non-insured damage to make it an event covered by insurance, and inflating the value of the loss.

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8.

Insurance fraud is deliberately undetectable, unlike visible crimes such as robbery or murder.

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9.

The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud estimates that in 2006 a total of about $80 billion was lost in the United States due to insurance fraud.

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10.

Insurance fraud can be classified as either hard fraud or soft fraud.

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11.

Hard fraud occurs when someone deliberately plans or invents a loss, such as a collision, auto theft, or fire that is covered by their insurance policy in order to claim payment for damages.

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12.

Soft fraud can occur when, while obtaining a new health insurance policy, an individual misreports previous or existing conditions to obtain a lower premium on the insurance policy.

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13.

The majority of life insurance fraud occurs at the application stage, involving applicants misrepresenting their health, their income, and other personal information in order to get a cheaper premium.

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14.

An example of life insurance fraud occurred in the case of John Darwin, a former teacher and prison officer who turned up alive in December 2007, five years after he was thought to have died in a canoeing accident, claiming to have no memory of the period after his disappearance.

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15.

Insurance fraud was extradited to Britain and imprisoned for seven years on charges of fraud, theft, and forgery.

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16.

Health insurance fraud is described as an intentional act of deceiving, concealing, or misrepresenting information that results in health care benefits being paid to an individual or group.

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17.

Many patients, although disapproving of the idea of Insurance fraud, are sometimes more willing to accept it when it affects their own medical care.

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18.

Examples of soft auto-insurance fraud include filing more than one claim for a single injury, filing claims for injuries not related to an automobile accident, misreporting wage losses due to injuries, and reporting higher costs for car repairs than those that were actually paid.

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19.

Hard auto-insurance fraud can include activities such as staging automobile collisions, filing claims when the claimant was not actually involved in the accident, submitting claims for medical treatments that were not received, or inventing injuries.

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20.

Hard Insurance fraud can occur when claimants falsely report their vehicle as stolen.

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21.

Unemployment insurance fraud can occur when someone who is not unemployed or who steals the identity of another individual obtains unemployment benefits to which he or she is not entitled.

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22.

Insurance fraud investigators are trained to question the suspect in a way that precludes the suspect raising a valid defense at a later time.

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