Here is a link to the article with background information regarding big lawsuite Insurance companies filed against 74 defandents for $100 million in New York State. http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20031203005330&newsLang=en
I have a hunch (based on hearsay) that this scam has been going on for more then 10 years now although I dont have proof to show. Of course people have staged car accidents for as long as they could but this is a different matter. This was an organized crime activity. The so called “runners” would go into the russian immigrant community and recruiting otherwise law abiding people straped for cash to ride in cars then going to pre-arranged doctor that would then receive money for it. Some participants have performed the routine for multiple times and filed for identical medical treatments.
Only now police seems to actualy show any interest in catching the people who organized all this. The insurance companies now are acting tough by filing this lawsuit. But lets consider this the consumers have been charged for all this, with ever growing premiums. The insurance companies I have no doubt have no plans to reimburce the motorists. Now if someone files a claim for $10,000 for a knee injury that they had already had a couple of month before it dont take much to actualy find that out. The insurance companies would make us believe that they didnt know, that they had to pay out based on no-fault laws, that they have no resources to invastigage the validity of claims and such. The pattern for these fraud claims is very easy to detect with a trivial database query. I find it unlikely that the Insurance companies did not know what was going on.
Finaly the theory is that Insurance company very well knew who the fraudulent doctors/clinics were and just didn’t do anything. It is to their advantage so they can just can raise the premiums. Once they do get tough and close the loophole the preminums stay the same, so the companies profit.
This kind of things are very hard to proof but I just like to see readers opinions regarding the plausibility of this theory or any other references that proof/disprove this theory.
