Insurance fraud and orchestrated car accidents.

The police, insurance companies and a recent Trevor McDonald show highlighted the problem with insurance fraud as a result of orchestrated car accidents.

They take various forms. The first which is a con on the innocent driver. The car, driven by the fraudster, waits until he has a car travelling close behind and brakes hard causing the driver to run into the back. After making some excuses about a cat running across the road the innocent driver sees that he is probably at fault.

The "very reasonable" fraudster suggests that he could get a friend to repair the car cheaply and save the driver losing his no-claims discount. After agreeing the driver receives a call from someone purporting to be a body shop and could do the job for £250 cash. Either he will arrange to drop by to pick up the money or the fraudster could drop by to pick up the cash to pay his friend for the repairs.

In a slightly more complex situation the fraudster swaps insurance details and claims for the car repairs off your insurance but then also claims for non existant injuries. In the meantime you have lost your no claims bonus. This fraud is costing the Insurance industry £4 billion per annum and has drawn in gangs of fraudsters which the industry find hard to detect. Some claims involve what were written off cars that have been repaired and insured then involved in accidents that have netted the fraudster £10's thousands in repairs and false injury claims.

The problem relating to all of this is that the fraudster purposely causes accidents that could result in actual injuries to innocent drivers and pedestrians. In addition you could lose your no claims bonus and if only covered by third party insurance end up with a damaged car that you have to repair out of your own pocket.

The advice given by all is to make sure that you take of many pictures of the incident as you can on mobile phone or better still carry a disposable camera in your car then tell the police and your insurer if you are suspicious at all about the accident.

Autoglass have reported that smash and grab raids on cars has increase by a fifth this year mainly as a result of increased use of portable sat nav units, something we have reported upon in the past. However, with the assistance of Tracker the police are starting to crack down on this crime which in the words of the police has reached "epidemic proportions".

Dummy units are fitted with special tracking devices which Tracker can locate with pin point accuracy. Staffordshire police are the first to test the system setting up cars which are normally hit on by organised gangs. These devices will give the police the chance to break these gangs.