A Video Explaining How to Discover and Defeat Insurance Fraud

Read the full article at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/identifying-insurance-fraud-barry-zalma-esq-cfe and see the full video at https://rumble.com/vizjjz-a-video-explaining-how-to-discover-and-defeat-insurance-fraud.html and at https://youtu.be/OHW2v037OFs and at https://zalma.com/blog plus more than 3800 posts. 

Next to tax fraud, insurance fraud is the most practiced crime in the world. It is perpetrated by members of every race, religion, sexual orientation, and nationality. Insurance fraud is perpetrated by members of every profession. The temptation to commit insurance fraud is great because prosecutions are rare, convictions are rarer and the convicted serve little or no time in prison. The possibility of a tax-free profit, coupled with the commonly held belief that it is not a crime or morally wrong to steal from an insurer is often too difficult for normally honest people to resist.

In September 2019 the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, after reporting on the conviction of an insurance fraud perpetrator who was sentenced to probation only, asked: “What’s wrong with courts that won’t send frauds to jail for a felony?” The answer is a failure to educate the judiciary that insurance fraud is a serious crime against the public – not just what they consider a rich and less than honorable industry.

The education effort must explain to the public and the judiciary that each year, the effect of insurance fraud runs to billions of dollars. It is estimated that insurance fraud takes between 3% and 30% of the premiums collected by insurers doing business in the United States. It drains from $80 billion to $300 billion from the assets of insurers and similar amounts from government supported “insurance” programs like the National Flood Insurance Program, crop insurance programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Disability, and Obamacare.

Insurance fraud is not limited to the US. It happens in every country where insurance exists. For example, in the United Kingdom, insurance fraud is estimated to take £1.4 billion a year. [See www.insurancefraudbureau.org/.]  In Canada, insurance fraud accounted for between 10% and 15% of premiums in 2009—or an estimated $C1.3 billion, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC).