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MPI releases top five frauds of 2012

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 12/27/2012 12:59 PM | Comments: 0 | Last Modified: 12/27/2012 4:58 PM | Updates

Don’t lie to MPI.

The provincial auto insurer released its top five frauds of 2012, where dishonest vehicle owners paid the price for filing fraudulent claims.

Manitoba Public Insurance said its Special Investigations Unit prevented payouts of $9 million in fraudulent auto-related claims this year.

The top five frauds included:

A man denied any involvement in a collision involving his own vehicle, which had sideswiped another vehicle. Police went to the man’s home, about a block away from the collision scene, and found the owner drinking beer, who denied any involvement.

However the collision had been witnessed by an off-duty police officer on his way to work, who saw the driver run away from the crash and was able to pick the owner out of a photo lineup. A friend of the owner and passenger in the vehicle later confirmed the owner had been driving.

The owner was fined $1,500 and ordered to pay $60,000 in vehicle damages.

Two men were fined $1,000 each and claims of $16,000 denied after they admitted hiring an arsonist to destroy their vehicles.

Surveillance video captured image of an individual smashing the windows of two vehicles and setting them on fire.

As a result of the SIU work, one of the vehicle owners admitted he and another man hired a third person to destroy their vehicles to avoid repair costs.

The arsonist was a youth who was ordered to complete an alternative measures program.

A Winnipeg man was fined $1,000 and his $8,200 claim for damaged vehicle denied after he was tripped up by his vehicle’s data crash recorder.

The man claimed his vehicle was damaged when a truck ran a stop sign and hit him.

But the vehicle crash recorder on his Chevy Cobalt revealed the car was parked at the time of the collision.

The man later admitted his car was in poor mechanical condition and staged the collision in hopes of having it written off.

A Winnipeg woman was fined $1,100 and her $20,000 claim denied after it was discovered she lied about who was driving her vehicle.

The woman told MPI she was alone at the time of a collision but the vehicle’s data crash recorder indicated the passenger seat was occupied. Witnesses told police at the scene that vehicle had been driven by a man who appeared to be impaired and smelled of alcohol and was unsteady on his feet.

A man who had been collecting Income Replacement benefits for a year following a collision was fined $1,000 and ordered to pay restitution of $8,466 after he pleaded guilty to fraud.

MPI paid the man benefits when he claimed he was too badly injured to work. After nearly a year, the SIU investigated and found that the man had been working – activity logs at his place of employment revealed he had put in 131 shifts of employment while receiving income replacement benefits.

History

Updated on Thursday, December 27, 2012 at 4:58 PM CST: corrects typo

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