A driver wants to turn left, another in front, waved him through, but as soon as he advances, his car is struck from behind by another: thus a collision occurs often arranged by to insurance fraud rampant in Canada. This is an organized criminal activity relatively new and highly sophisticated, whose sales could reach one billion Canadian dollars or 750 million euros, according to the chairman of the insurance branch of the large bank RBC, Ken Bowman."The accident" was arranged to take advantage of an insurance system that reimburses damages to third parties without seeking to establish accountability. The authors first affect money for damage to the car. Then they will gain much more by presenting false medical certificates and false invoices for nonexistent care.
According to Mr. Bowman, fraudsters buy luxury cars like Mercedes, and recruit "passengers" paid up to 1000 dollars to get into a vehicle before participating in a fake accident. In some cases, four people then submit records to insurers reporting injuries and multiple trauma and major bills for examinations and care they have allegedly received.
"It's a business than a billion dollars, says Mr. Bowman. And deterrence is really modest vis-à-vis crime. Obviously there should be stiffer penalties. "In the eyes of experts, fraud networks are experiencing a boom in Canada, taking advantage of the fact that the legislation is weak and weakly enforced and there is no bank national data to identify suspicious claims.
Insurers also bear some responsibility, because of their reluctance to share their information. According to Mr. Bowman, they consider such information as private and commercially valuable and do not want to share with their competitors. Above all, they traditionally consider it cheaper to repay a suspect damage to launch an investigation.
But with the arrival of more complex and costly fraud, which the insured must pay the price through their premiums go up, they are more inclined to take action. In 2009, insurance fraud accounted for between 10 and 15% of premiums, or about $ 1.3 billion, according to the Bureau of Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), their professional association.
Diversions were most numerous in Toronto, where at least thirty organizing networks of collisions have been identified. According to the OCA, in many cases, individuals from New York were able to open Ontario clinics suspicious or existed only on paper. But for the moment only one has been dismantled through a broad investigation dubbed Project 92.
This showed that the group had misappropriated $ 25 million. Twenty people were convicted, including two for involvement in organized crime. In December, State Farm Insurance Company has launched lawsuits against several clinics in Toronto, accused of having prepared false invoices signed by practitioners who do not exercise it.
"We adopt an active approach. (...) These groups must understand that they do not have carte blanche. We will not stand idly by, to be paid indefinitely," says the spokesman for State Farm, John Bordignon .
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