Insurance Fraud

Insurance fraud is the act of intentionally deceiving or misleading an insurance company in order to collect money or benefits to which the individual is not entitled. This can include making false claims, exaggerating the extent of damages or injuries, or providing false information on insurance applications.

• Molly and Clay Daniels, a couple from Leander, Texas, robbed the grave of Charlotte Davis, placed her body in a car with some of Clay's belongings, pushed the car off the road and set it on fire in the hopes of collecting $110,000 in life insurance money upon Clay's supposed “death”
• The couple initially succeeded in the scheme, with family members identifying items from the car as belonging to Clay, but were eventually caught by authorities and charged with insurance fraud, arson, and desecration of a cemetery ¹⁾

• John Darwin faked his own death in 2002 with the help of his wife Anne
• The couple lied to their two sons and the world, and claimed the life insurance money
• In 2007, John turned up at a police station claiming he had amnesia
• The story became known as the “Canoe Man” and the couple were caught and convicted of fraud ²⁾

• Two men, armed with pistols and disguised as Hasidic Jews, entered Real Creations, a jewelry business in Manhattan on December 31, 2008 and made off with millions of dollars in gems from a safe.
• The suspects were never found, and an insurance claim of $7 million was filed with Lloyd’s of London. The missing jewels were never recovered
• Law enforcement authorities believe that Mahaveer Kankariya, the owner of Real Creations and Atul Shah, the owner of Dialite, a jewelry company that shared a suite with Real Creations, damaged the camera system and filed an insurance claim to defraud the company and escape financial problems
• Kankariya and Shah were arrested last year and charged with insurance fraud, attempted grand larceny and falsifying business records. ³⁾

• Isabel Parker, 72, staged slip-and-fall accidents in various stores and on the street, then settled with the insurance companies that covered the property owners.
• Parker pleaded guilty to 8 counts of insurance fraud, 6 counts of forgery, 6 counts of theft by deception and related offenses for stealing more than $130,000 through false insurance claims between 1993 and 2000.
• In all, Parker admitted getting more than $500,000 in phony claims in Philadelphia, Delaware County, and New Jersey.
• Parker's defense attributed her actions to a gambling addiction and that once she saw how easy it was to collect insurance claims, she just couldn't resist. ⁴⁾

• Jean Crump was a mastermind of an elaborate life insurance scam, where she created a bogus death certificate, purchased a grave plot and loaded the casket with items to simulate the weight of a corpse.
• Crump was a onetime Long Beach mortician, who used her skills to loot insurance companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars through elaborate life insurance scams.
• Crump even tried to pull off one of the most elaborate life insurance scams in Los Angeles’ recent history, including the cremation of a woman who had actually died years earlier in Arkansas.
• She exhumed the weighted casket and inserted a mannequin and cow bones to throw off workers at the crematorium where it was headed. ⁵⁾