54 arrests were made throughout the Bay Area and involved claims estimated at over $250,000.
A widespread auto insurance fraud investigation that spanned the state of California has now resulted in the arrest of 54 people in the Bay Area, after an alleged rash of falsified claims were submitted to insurers.
This announcement was recently made by the Department of Insurance within the state.
According to the announcement that was made by the state department officials, the claims from this insurance fraud bust could have led to over $250,000 in losses in the Bay Area, alone. In order to conduct this investigation, detectives from the department worked alongside the district attorney’s offices in several parts of the state – Santa Clara, San Francisco, Contra Costa, Alameda, and Solano – as well as with local law enforcement agencies.
Most of the insurance fraud claims had to do with underinsured or uninsured drivers who recently altered their coverage status.
The majority of the insurance claims were made by people who had previously been uninsured or underinsured, but who had then purchased coverage or added to their policies after having experienced damage to their vehicles or after having been involved in a collision, said officials in the state. Those officials also added that the alleged scam was discovered either ahead of the claim payment, or after it had already occurred.
They said that the alleged fraudsters had made claims for vehicles that weren’t insured. Among the defendants, there were 44 cases filed in the Bay Area, 14 were filed in Santa Clara County, 22 were filed in Alameda County, 7 were filed in Contra Costa County, as well as 2 that were filed in San Francisco and 1 in Solano County.
There were 195 total arrests made throughout 22 counties in this insurance fraud investigation. Those involved about $75,000 in actual losses, as well as an additional figure of over $1 million in potential losses, said the California officials. Some of the cases that were investigated also involved the participation of two professionals in the insurance industry, as with a car that had allegedly been used for the transportation of drugs from Mexico, there was a fatal collision with a pedestrian, as well as a staged collision.