INVESTIGATORS COMBING SOCIAL MEDIA TO EXPOSE INSURANCE SCAMS
Insurance
investigators are making more use of the cyber world to expose scammers. There
are so many people using social media nows that the sites are routinely
monitored for evidence of fraud, reports CBS News correspondent Chip Reid. Unfortunately for them, the scammers are all not aware that these days there are eyes everywhere and eventually are get caught.
We already reported on the attempted scam on the million-dollar Bugatti that became viral over the internet last year.
It was a beautiful
sight -- a million-dollar Bugatti sports car cruising along by a bay in Texas.
So beautiful, an
admiring passenger in a nearby car caught it all on videotape.
"He runs it
straight off the road into a salty marsh and lets it run so it gets flooded and
ruined," Coalition Against Insurance Fraud communications director James
Quiggle said.
It turns out the
driver had insured his million dollar car for more than two million. He claimed
it was an accident, but when he tried to collect, the insurance company found
the video on YouTube -- sufficient evidence to deny the claim and convict the
driver of what the industry calls the largest single attempted car insurance
scam in history.
"Social media
is an amazing tool," Quiggle said.
In fact, it's become
standard practice for insurance fraud investigators to use powerful data mining
software to comb through hundreds of social media sites.
From Facebook, to
dating sites, to Twitter, officials are looking for evidence of fraud.
An Arizona woman
pleaded guilty after a Facebook photo showed her wearing wedding rings she
claimed she had lost while swimming in the ocean.
"They will
plead guilty on site without even trying to fight it. It's just too hard to
fight in court," Quiggle said.
An Ohio man
collected $30,000 in benefits after claiming he was too badly injured to work.
Photos on Facebook led investigators to his gym, where undercover cameras
caught him bench pressing five hundred pounds.
"People cannot
resist the impulse to share the details of their lives with millions of
strangers on social media sites," Quiggle said.
Even if those
details are incriminating, Quiggle said, either they don't know or they don't
care.
"They have an
irresistible impulse and this is what gets them into trouble," Quiggle
said.
A New York area cop
who was on disability was found by insurance investigators on YouTube touring
with his punk rock band.
"He claimed he
injured his right arm so badly he could barely move it. Well he's on tour with
his band on stage and he's fist pumping," Quiggle said.
Chalk up another one
for the insurance companies.
As to whether this
represents a privacy issue, Quiggle said the courts routinely allow
investigators to mine social media sites.
"When you're
posting your exploits in front of tens of millions of people to freely see,
that's not privacy anymore," he said. "You've posted your activities
on your digital front lawn."
With a record number
of people now using social media, it's revolutionizing fraud investigations and
helping to solve some of the most difficult cases. That's good news for
consumers, since the cost of bogus claims -- estimated to be nearly $80 billion
a year -- is passed on to policy holders in the form of higher premiums.