Dealer fleets are seen as a ‘soft touch’ by Cash-for-crash fraudsters who submit bogus insurance claims against the vehicles, as Research Garage in Nuneaton have discovered.

Typical scams involve the fraudster deliberately backing into fleet vans or cars when in traffic and then claiming it was a rear-end shunt. Without any evidence to the contrary, the Research Garage’s insurers would always pay out without any dispute.  One solution to the problem is continuous recording video.

Research Garage in Nuneaton, who represent  Fiat, Abarth, Alfa Romeo and Peugeot found that criminal gangs were seeking out its branded fleet vehicles because they were guaranteed to be insured and were considered an easy target.

The company’s managing director , Mick Norcia, explains the problem: “We would have around 40 bogus claims a year, which ranged from faked rear-end shunts to pedestrians claiming they’d been hit by courtesy cars. In almost all cases previously we would have to claim on our insurance as we were not able to defend against the allegations.

“Since we installed the SmartWitness KP1 cameras in all our fleet vehicles we have reduced bogus claims to zero. We still have had just the same number of claims against us this year, but every single time we have had evidence to prove we were not at fault.

“Bogus claims gangs are starting to get to know that we aren’t a soft touch any more. Recently one car overtook one of our vans and then immediately did an emergency stop right in front of him. The driver got out to exchange insurance details and our driver pointed out that he had got a SmartWitness camera and that all of the incident had been caught on video.The other driver left immediately and no claim was filed.”