When a person thinks of fraud, they typically think of crimes involving money, but there are several types of fraud currently being investigated in New York. One type of fraud that has had a significant increase of occurrence in the last year is insurance fraud.
Insurance fraud usually requires additional criminal activity, and is usually not a stand-alone crime. This is because most of the time fraudulent documents or accounts must be created to commit insurance fraud. If you lie about your income in order to obtain Medicaid, you are guilty of insurance fraud and can be prosecuted to the fullest extent. Insurance fraud is not exclusive to health insurance, here are some extreme examples of the crime:
– Homeowner’s Insurance or Personal Property Insurance: People who are upside down in their homes have burned down their property just before foreclosure proceedings started. With the economy in terrible condition, many people are trying to “recoup” losses to property, greatly exaggerating the value of “stolen” or “destroyed” items.
– Fake Slip and Fall: A common misconception is that all businesses have big insurance policies to cover accidents. One woman became notorious for her slipping and falling schemes, filing 49 claims against various stores, in an effort to pay off her gambling debt. Her claims resulted in $500,000 of pay-outs over the lifetime of her schemes.
– Automobile: Have you ever thought about how easy it would be to “lose” your piece of junk car? Or how nice it would be to have a large payout for your car, the one that went up in flames? A dramatic increase in these types of crimes became obvious when the economy tanked.
– Restaurant claims: One woman tried to sue a Cracker Barrel restaurant for $500,000 after finding a mouse in her soup. Investigations showed that the mouse did not have soup in its lungs, nor did it have any evidence of drowning. The woman was sentenced to one year in jail.
It is possible for you to have a part of insurance fraud without prior knowledge. This can occur when you give an agent money to pay a practitioner or doctor, and the agent pockets money. There are other ways in which you can unknowingly become involved with fraud, so it is important to hire an experienced defense lawyer.
