The story takes place in Britain, where John Darwin and his wife Anne lived. John had previously been a teacher and a prison officer. From the outside, it looked like the Darwins were living well. Unfortunately the reality was that John and Anne were heavily in debt and needed to find a way out. That is when the story starts to get interesting. In 2000, John went on a canoe trip by himself. Anne then reported him missing and the search was on. Authorities searched by air and sea, and all that they found was the wreckage of John’s canoe. They never found John. Reportedly the search cost approximately £70,000.

Thirteen months later at an inquest, John Darwin was legally declared dead. Anne was now clear to claim the insurance money from multiple policies that John Darwin had taken out on his life. One policy was held by the Unat Direct Insurance Management Company. The face value of the policy was £50,000 but only £25,000 was paid to Anne Darwin because a body was never found. Norwich Union also paid £130,000, which was the remaining mortgage balance they owed on their home.

Apparently John Darwin was the mastermind behind the plan. He had even left Anne a spreadsheet with detailed instructions of what to do once he had gone missing. She would not have to be alone for long; only weeks after he went missing, John Darwin was reported to have moved back into the home that he shared with Anne. When people came to the house he went through a secret entrance to a hideout. He had chosen a disguise with a beard and was limping, despite not being injured. Over time he was able to obtain a passport under the name John Jones.

The Darwins had seemingly been successful with their plan. Anne had collected the insurance money, sold the properties that they owned and had moved their money to offshore bank accounts. Oddly, it was only then that John Darwin decided to show up at a West London police station and claimed to have had amnesia for the seven years following his canoe accident. It seems incredible that he would decide to do this, but his thinking was that he was tired of life as a fugitive, and he imagined that he could convince the police that he had really been missing and that his wife had collected the insurance money in good faith. He planned to pay back the insurance money and be on his way.

The problem was that the Darwins did not cover their tracks well enough and photos of them on vacation together surfaced. This on top of eyewitness accounts and a tip from a colleague of Mrs. Darwin added up to too much evidence against them.

The story ends with the Darwins being disowned by their sons, and serving six years each in jail. To top it off, they have greater monetary problems than they ever did. As enticing as it might be to commit insurance fraud, the results can be disastrous.

Nowadays, an easy dollar seems like the easy solution for every problem one might face. Whether it’s to rid yourself off debt that has been plaguing you for years or to help out a loved one; these reasons make ordinary people turn against the law in order to fulfill ones desires and meet ones needs. The United States, as well as other countries that are enduring financial adversities, is all experiencing fraud at high records.

Health insurance fraud is one of the most common forms of fraud known to man. Anything from false injuries on the job to staged automobile accidents are all commonly used forms of health insurance fraud. Staged automobile accidents have been a reoccurring problem plaguing the United Kingdom’s roads in recent years. The act of one driver hitting another and claiming to be the victim in order to claim insurance money, has received the attention of United Kingdom residents, as well as citizens worldwide. Lack of damage, lack of possible injury, outrageous financial demands and fake doctors backing up the culprit’s story are all manifestations of a falsified claim and is punishable by law.

Sometimes it’s not just the everyday, average Joe who commits the fraud. Sometimes it’s the person who handles all of the information. Doctors, chiropractors and psychiatrists can be behind health insurance frauds as well. A doctor in Tennessee was recently convicted of prescription drug fraud and improper prescribing techniques. One of his patients, a Tennessean police officer was also indicted under charges of turning around and selling these exact drugs that were prescribed to him by his doctor. Trials for the two professional, together with other individuals involved, have yet to be set although the doctor is accused of four felony accusations with up to twelve charges pending.

Injustice will always have its price. Fraudulent individuals will eventually be caught and given the appropriate punishment through the court. The examples mentioned about deceptive claims and other acts are facts that real life people endure once they commit serious crimes. The aftermath of these crimes and the actions taken by these wrongdoers don’t just stop with themselves. The crimes affect third parties like the patients the deceitful doctor treated. In the Tennessee doctor’s case, he was putting an excess of potentially deadly pills into his patient’s prescription to receive more fees from the insurer. This malpractice is detrimental to the lives of his patients if this was not stopped (Luckily it was). To protect yourself from these scams, make sure to know your physician well and other services before actually availing of them.

We are all aware of the style of Insurance Fraud that is seen in the movies, when someone endeavors to fake their own death in an effort to have somebody collect the insurance money. There are times when truth can be as strange as fiction, and this is the case for a family in Britain. John Darwin and his wife Anne and their story are proof of that.

The story starts about eight years ago when John Darwin was the apparent victim of a canoeing accident. He was reported missing back in 2000 and what followed was a search operation by both sea and air that cost an estimated £70,000. His body was never found, although searchers did find the wreckage of his small craft. Thirteen months later at an inquest, he was officially declared dead. Anne Darwin was the recipient of £25,000 paid from Unat Direct Insurance Management. John Darwin had taken out a policy on his own life for £50,000, but because no body was ever found, Mrs. Darwin was paid half of the death benefit. She was also the beneficiary of a mortgage life insurance plan that paid off the £130,000 mortgage that they owed on their home.

The story really starts to get interesting in December of 2007, when John Darwin shows up at a West London police station and explains to them that he may be the subject of a missing persons report. He claims that he had no recollection of the previous seven years. Of course the members of his family were initially ecstatic when they discovered that their father was alive when they believed he had tragically perished seven years before.

As it turns out, John Darwin was never lost at all. It came to be known that Darwin had actually been living in his house the entire time. He and his wife had concocted an elaborate plan to fake his death, and when people came to the house he simply left through a passage that led to a secret hideout. The Darwins had become mired in debt as a result of living an extravagant lifestyle, and they had owed many thousands of pounds to different entities. Despite owning a number of different properties, they had found themselves in a position where they desperately needed money and saw a way to get it.

The Darwins remain conflicted to this day about what the plan was eventually going to be, but the basic idea was that they would move to a different country once the dust had settled and start a new life, in part with the proceeds of the insurance money. Mrs. Darwin was actually in Panama at the time when John Darwin arrived at the police station in West London. She had already moved there and had sold off the properties that the couple had owned and transferred the money to offshore bank accounts.

It may remain a mystery for all time why the Darwins or at least John Darwin gave up on their plan after apparently succeeding. Now the Darwins face a number of charges and the penalties will not likely stop at having to pay back the money that they obtained from the insurance fraud. It seems that sometimes in the end, crime does not pay.

Fraud against insurance companies and individuals occurs every day. It is hard to know exactly what the insurance fraud costs are on a yearly basis, but estimates put the number at somewhere around $30 billion a year. That’s billion with a ‘b’. Imagine how much this costs honest policyholders in extra premiums every year. It is possible that insurance fraud adds an additional ten per cent on to our insurance premiums, depending on the company and the product.

Most states have fraud bureaus to handle cases of insurance fraud. They have varying power from state to state but their general mandate is the same. These bureaus were set up in an effort to stem the tide of insurance fraud which was on the rise. The agencies as a whole have reported that the number of tips that they get about suspected cases of fraud have increased, resulting in more cases and more convictions. It seems that this measure is having a degree of success in prosecuting criminals committing fraud.

The variety and the amounts involved are indeed staggering. For Auto Insurance Fraud, the total estimated fraudulent claims came to somewhere between $4.8 billion and $6.8 billion for the year 2007. These numbers come from statistics released by the Insurance Research Council’s study in a November 2008 study, “Fraud and Buildup in Auto Insurance Claims: 2008 Edition.” Payments of fraudulent claims for auto injury coverage, personal injury protection and bodily injury fell into the range of 13 to 18 percent though 2007 according to the IRC. Further findings indicate that the incidence of claim build up is also prevalent. Claim buildup is when an otherwise legitimate claim is inflated in an effort to get more money from the insurance company. In 2002 this number was estimated at 18 percent of total claims, and for the year 2007 this number has risen to 20 percent. The study by the IRC looked at over 42.000 cases of auto injury claims that had been closed with payment made. The study encompassed fifty eight percent of the private passenger market. It is entirely possible that the numbers estimated were less than the actual total because of the fact that they were closed cases.

Perhaps one of the most telling sets of statistics comes from the individuals in society themselves. According to a study conducted by the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, one out of five people polled believe that it is acceptable under certain conditions to defraud an insurance company. The percentages of people that found certain practices unethical dropped in the categories of falsifying information to lower premiums, filing a claim for damage that happened before the coverage was in place and inflating a claim to cover a deductible. These lower percentages occurred over the period from 1997 to 2008. It seems that it has not taken us long to change out minds about how acceptable it is to commit insurance fraud.

Tough financial times seem to have made people more prone to committing insurance fraud but be warned; the fail safe measures that are in place are more robust than they have ever been and committing this kind of crime might not be seen as a big deal by many but it still is to law enforcement.

Fraud comes in many forms. Whether it’s medical or life insurance related, insurance fraud has become more common and catastrophic than ever before. Today, home insurance deception is occurring more frequently than the other types of security plans and is proving to grow in number. Not only can this form of fraud rob innocent people off all of their money but it can also leave them homeless and in deeper debt.

Earlier in the year, the corrupt nature of American politics reared its ugly head yet again. Gregory Brent Warr, mayor of Gulfport, Mississippi, and his wife Laura were indicted under charges of insurance fraud. It was discovered that they were involved in a corruption scandal regarding hurricane Katrina victims. Over $220,000 was embezzled through FEMA, which would have gone towards citizens affected by the hurricane of 2005. Hurricane Katrina was recording as the most costly hurricane, damage-wise, in the history of United States. The infamous calamity destroyed an estimated $89.6 worth of properties and flooded 80% of the city of New Orleans. This unfortunate incident left the city in ruins ever since. The calamity ranked among the top 5 of the most deadly hurricanes of all time claiming the lives of 1,836 people throughout the southeast, all the way up to Ohio.

This scandal put the mayor in even deeper water because of the severity of the disaster. The government’s response and aid to the victims of the region has been a hot topic since 2005. The extent of the fraud’s consequences and effects made it the worst scams known to mankind.

The former mayor, Gregory Brent Warr, was not the only one to be accused of fraud since 2005. Warr, however, is on the few who were indicted under such charges.

As with any type of fraud, the people who commit these heinous crimes should be punished by law. There are instances though; that the people who commit these scams are way too powerful to be brought to justice and their paper trail dissipates to the point that it’s no longer possible to prove them guilty. Mayor Warr is one of the few examples of justice served amidst social status and influence.

There were over seventy countries worldwide that came together to help the victims of hurricane Katrina in Southeastern United States. This region was already known to be poverty stricken and its crime and violence rate set really high. The aid came as a blessing especially with the local government turning its back on its people—especially the injured parties—for personal interest.

In modern day America, it seems like everywhere you turn people are experiencing financial difficulties. The economic maelstrom has put individuals in a position where they need to get money at any cost. People tend to create scams to loot cash from another person’s pocket like a beggar asks for money from passers-by. The problem is, these fraudulent individuals are not asking, they’re devising a plan to cheat some money out from insurers through falsified claims.

Health insurance fraud is more common than one might like to think. Medicaid estimates that the United States loses about $179 billion a year from health insurance fraud. Many of these claims are considered fraudulent due to “exaggerated claims”, take for instance the Liebeck v McDonalds case in 1994. The 79 year old Stella Liebeck, was burned by a hot cup of coffee she ordered from McDonalds. After undergoing 2 years of skin graft treatment, she sued McDonalds for $2.8 million by stating the coffee was “too hot“ and “she did not know it was that hot“. While McDonalds was found guilty in this case, it made way for many of the modern age precautions restaurants take when serving food and/or drinks. Now McDonalds, and many other restaurants, are required to print caution warnings on cup labels and list food ingredients in dishes to avoid similar cases from occurring. It was an exaggerated claim though it was beneficial to customers as well.

Here are other samples of health Insurance fraud:

“Columbia/HCA Healthcare has agreed to pay at least $754 million after over billing taxpayer-funded Medicare for years. If the deal stands, it will be the largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history. The chain (now named HCA) billed Medicare for unneeded lab tests, improper diagnoses to make patients seem sicker than they were, and disguising unreimbursable expenses as reimbursable. Criminal charges still are pending.”

”Massachusetts orthopedic surgeon Harold Goodman routinely gave patients potentially harmful X-rays and steroid injections they didn’t need so he could falsely bill Medicaid. Goodman spent as few as five minutes with each patient, giving one patient 74 X-rays and 112 steroid injections in less than three years. Goodman received six months in prison in 2000.”

One must have morals when it comes to going about getting money. Times are getting tough but remember, they’re tough for everyone (not just you) and we need to come together instead of pulling each other down. Insurers are trying to minimize these scams together with government agencies. Particular establishments were made to protect the insurers as well as policyholders from deceptive claims. These independent entities have addressed many attempts at fraud, but not all have been successfully debunked and these seem to remain as ongoing trials.