Rise of ‘swoop and squat’ car crash scam
Immediately, another vehicle pulls in in front of both of you, and slams on the brakes.
The result – you end up rear ending the car in front and your insurance company ends up paying bogus medical claims and repair bills.
Huge in the US and rising in Britain, “swoop and squat” is the latest insurance scam to hit our shores, and while only a handful of cases have been identified here, insurance fraud investigator Willie McGee maintains keeping one step ahead of fraudsters is paramount to fighting them. “This scam involves two cars working together to box in the victim who ends up paying for the accident. The car which caused the crash will have disappeared never to be seen again,” he explains.
Head of AXA’s special investigation unit, Mr McGee recently foiled a swoop and squat claim.
“A claim official was explaining how a crash had occurred and I recognised immediately what it was,” he said. “It is certainly one to watch and fraudsters are always looking for new ways to make claims.”
Overseeing the unit for the past seven years, Mr McGee, a former Garda fraud squad detective inspector, was approached by AXA following his retirement with a view to heading up its new fraud squad.
“It was a brand new role, set up on the back of a survey AXA conducted on people’s attitudes towards fraud,” he said.
Since 2002, the team has strengthened from four to 10 full-time staff, a telling reflection of the increase in insurance scams.
According to Mr McGee, awareness of insurance fraud has “changed massively” in recent years, and a new protocol of how to present a case between the gardaí and the insurance industry has made securing convictions easier.
“Cooperation with gardaí is central to the role. I liaise with the guards on every case and am in touch with them on a day-to-day basis.”
But the role, he says, is completely different from his job with the gardaí. “Now, I detect and refer on and although I know what is needed to get a conviction, in the insurance industry we are constrained from further delving into a case.”
Some cases are, according to the Mayo man, more extreme than others.
“Often people buy written off cars and insure them. They do not seem to be aware that we can check.
“We had a claim in respect of a car less than a year old. The woman who put in the claim said it had been stolen outside the graveyard when she was praying for her young son.”
Upon further investigation, however, it transpired the car had been written off during a Garda chase.
“A relative had written it off, the woman was using a sympathetic tack to try and disguise the fraud.”
A less serious, but still fraudulent case, says McGee was that of two golfers who claimed they were suffering from back trauma due to a car crash.
“We found out under a discovery order that both men had reduced their handicap by three while maintaining they had whiplash.”
