Staged Auto Accidents
Drivers maneuver innocent motorists into low-speed crashes, often making it seem the motorists are at fault. In many cases, the con’s car is packed with so-called passengers who are part of the scam. The passengers claim they received painful (and fake) back and neck injuries that require expensive treatment from a chiropractor or physical therapist who’s part of the scam. The shady medical provider files thousands of dollars with the motorist’s insurance company for useless or even phantom treatment. Increasingly, the crashes never happen at all—the cash and ensuing treatment are fabricated. The largest concentrations of staged accidents are in urban areas. The high traffic volume makes large numbers of injury claims more plausible and recruits for the scams are more-easily available.
1. Organized gangs: Organized gangs involving recruiters, car “passengers,” doctors, medical clinics, lawyers are involved in many of the largest staged-accident crimes. The gangs lure motorists into crashes, crash their own cars into each other, or invent “paper” accidents that never happened in order to make large volumes of bogus injury claims. These rings are widespread in several areas of the US, and often involve immigrants as street-level operatives. Many states have passed laws and regulations targeting staged-accident rings, and some have formed taskforces, hired special prosecutors and deployed other resources to shutting down the rings.