How to Recognize an Auto Insurance Fraud By Patricia Gabbett At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Auto insurance is, today, a huge industry in the United States. It has been made mandatory in most of the states. With most of the states following the tort system, many people are opting for auto insurance to be protected from getting sued. The tort system allows for the not at fault driver to sue the at-fault driver for the damages incurred during the accident.

With almost the entire car driving population of America being a client, the auto insurance industry is a huge one. The amount that each person is insured for is very high as well. All of this points to one thing. The insurance industry is a huge one and fraudsters will see this as a lucrative opportunity to make some money. This article focuses on some common auto insurance frauds and how to detect them.

In the United States, today, auto insurance fraud has become rampant and one should do everything within their power to ensure they are not scammed. Insurance fraud can work both ways. The customers can scam the insurance fraud company by making false claims and collecting money they are not entitled to. It is not uncommon to find insurance companies scamming on some of their more gullible customers and not paying them the money they are rightfully entitled to. There many such frauds that exist today. There are mainly two types of fraud. These are hard fraud and soft fraud.

Hard fraud is a big fraud. It will get plenty of attention. Usually a hard fraud tries to get millions of dollars from the insurance company. Some common frauds include staging of accidents and writing false medical bills to get more out of medical benefits policies. Most of the activities involved in hard fraud are criminal and punishable offenses. However, it is not only seasoned fraudsters that get caught with hard frauds. The average individual might also try to pull a hard fraud.

Hard fraud is very easy to detect. On the other hand, soft fraud is very hard to detect. This kind of fraud happens when people try to increase the insurance by claiming they are too ill to work. This way they get worker's compensation which they would not normally get. Worker's compensation claims are the most frequent of all soft frauds. These claims are responsible for most of the soft frauds today. This insurance policy alone costs insurance companies millions of dollars. The result of many such insurance frauds has resulted in rising insurance premiums.

Staged accidents by criminal elements are also very elaborate frauds that a customer or consumer has to be aware of. You have the swoop and squat frauds. These scams involve more than one vehicle where many people are involved in a single scam to get you to pay for their damages. A driver positions himself in front of the victim's vehicle. The one in front is known as the squat vehicle. The driver of the swoop vehicle will cut the squat driver, who will apply hard brakes immediately. The victim does not have any time to react and before he knows it, he has an accident that he has to pay for.

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