Fraud is not a victimless crime, police have repeated, after City of London officers from the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED) appeared on ITV’s ‘Tonight’ documentary series, as part of a show titled: “Secrets of your car insurance”.
The show, broadcast at 19:30hrs on Thursday, September 1, showed IFED officers investigating a suspected ‘Crash for Cash’ case in the Birmingham area, with cameras following the team as they executed a search warrant and arrested one of the suspects involved.
DS Matt Hussey and DC Daryl Fryatt talked about the wider impact of insurance fraud on the industry and the public, and how IFED are working with the insurance sector to investigate and bring insurance fraudsters to justice.
The programme is available on the ITV hub until September 30 at: http://www.itv.com/hub/tonight/1a2803a1040.
Detective Chief Inspector Oliver Little, pictured, who leads IFED said: “Documentaries such as this one help to showcase the fantastic work of all of our officers in investigating fraudsters and putting them before the courts and I’m extremely proud of what IFED has achieved over the past four years. But what the programme didn’t show was the months of hard work and investigation that goes into a job to get to a point where we can go and arrest suspects.
“Just as importantly, programmes such as this also help to show to the public that insurance fraud is not a victimless crime. ‘Crash for cash’ causes great harm to the public – not only by increasing premiums for all honest drivers, but the great physical harm it can cause as well. There have been cases where crash for cash fraudsters have ended up killing people– all because they wanted to make some money by defrauding insurers. The more we can do to expose the harm it does and those behind it, the better.”
For more about the IFED unit visit https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/advice-and-support/fraud-and-economic-crime/ifed/Pages/About-IFED.aspx.
