What are some of the most common insurance fraud occurrences?
Insurance fraud steals $80 billion every year according to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. Property/casualty insurance fraud is a crime that costs insurers, and ultimately their customers, an estimated $29 billion a year according to the Insurance Information Institute. Common frauds include “padding” or inflating actual claims; misrepresenting facts on an insurance application; submitting claims for injuries or damage that never occurred and “staging” accidents. Fraud is a deliberate deception practiced so as to secure unfair or unlawful gain. Insurance fraud can be “hard” or “soft.” Hard fraud occurs when someone deliberately fabricates claims or fakes an accident. Criminals are using increasingly sophisticated electronic schemes to defraud insurance companies. Soft insurance fraud, also known as opportunistic fraud, occurs when normally honest people pad legitimate claims or intentionally understate the number of miles they drive each year or, in the case of business owners,
