21st Century Wire says…
LIFE IMITATES ART: Benecio Del Toro dressed up as an Ashkenazi Jew in the opening scene of Guy Ritchie’s 2000 film, Snatch.
Insurance fraud, or as it’s endearingly called in cockney English, as “an insurance job”, is one of the most pervasive scams out there – carried out by both the mafia and (previously) legitimate business owners alike, as well as the rich and poor, young and old, church and state, and even by insurance industry insiders themselves.
The insurance business arrived on colonial US shores in 1752, courtesy of Benjamin Franklin who helped front the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire, the first mutual fire insurance company in America. Franklin also helped to start first life insurance company in America, the Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund.
With the explosion of insurance products in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, another explosion was also taking place – insurance scams and fraud. According to top lawyers, insurance from AIG pulled off the biggest-ever extortion racket scam when they managing to extract $25 billion in cash from the US government in bailouts following the 2008 sub-prime market crash.
The fraud and scams are nothing new, as Investopedia explains:
With the explosion in insurance products and the companies issuing them, the young industry was fraught with fraud and scandal. These ranged from issuing companies that did not actually have the capital to pay claims, running instead like fragile ‘Ponzi’ schemes, to insurers demanding unfairly high premiums or forcing out competitors in an attempt to create a monopoly. Many state laws were passed to try and curb the problems, but by the early 1900s things were still unsettled. (For related reading, see What Is A Pyramid Scheme?)
Here are some of the more recent, yet craziest US insurance fraud cases of the 21st Century – and what got them caught:
Infographic source: Eamonn Freeman from Easy Life Cover, based in the Republic of Ireland.
READ MORE FINANCIAL NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Financial Files
