An FBI agent posed as a prosecutor injury of a permanent office and the law caught comments scam artists, staging car accidents to defraud insurance companies of over $ 1 million, prosecutors, said Thursday.
So far, 82 people were arrested by e-mail and other offences of fraud in a barbed described by the authorities constitutes an important step forward in the fight against insurance fraud. Experts estimate that insurance fraud costs $ 7 billion to $ 15 billion per year, perhaps in the translation of $ 200 to $ 300 for each insured.
“People think they can win their lives to uncover fraudulent claims - after convicted a felony - they must have another line of work,” U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said.
As part of the operation, the FBI Fake an office in Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, on behalf of James L. Kent. Agents of Illinois has tilted the Supreme Court of the investigation, so that Kent can be added to a list of lawyers in Illinois, in any case considered whether his background.
Kent has been put in place quickly with a group of artists known as trackers, orchestrate fake car accidents on the roster of insurance fraud. The agent Kent known as each legitimate interests.
Officials said the FBI uses a camera hidden record sessions, which are liable to put Kent in his office in collaboration with people who were prepared to adapt to the alleged debt for car accidents. Kent, to ensure they had auto insurance in force before the green light.
Only then will the staging fake accidents, officials said. You talked bad victims were known as “dormant” because they were ready to sleep at night in the hospital. Nobody was really injured.
“Most thresholds were some coffee, collapsed while the cars were under the L-tracks” Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan said. He said that the fall has been staged in the streets and places Isolated increased Chicago’s Train-track.
The engravings are long occupied by the FBI as a tactical fight against crime. Claimed as Arab sheikhs Abscam agent operating in their investigations into corruption in Capitol Hill in early 1980 and, more recently, a false investment certificates Society in Miami in connection with another investigation.
The insurance Undercover investigation has been synchronized operation Soft Tissue, often cited by violations of the right of victims. Violations of “soft tissue” as muscles, are difficult to prove, and thus easier to falsify.
The plant, first by the Chicago Tribune, a little close collaboration between the federal government and the insurance industry.
Officials said the National-Versicherungs-Crime Bureau, a suburb of Chicago, a group funded by industry, has paid start-up costs of the operation, estimated at $ 300000.
Fitzgerald said he could only one case in which an industry had supported a federal study of a case a few years ago in New York. But he said he had no qualms of a possible conflict of interest.
At the press conference Thursday Fitzgerald announced five charges charging station 45 people in the various regulations, which is the case. They were added, these accusations have been smaller in recent months, bringing the total number of dependents 82
The defendant pleaded guilty on more, officials said.
While doctors is not to claims arising from false accidents, is the case, officials left open the possibility that some perhaps that the investigation continues.