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The offer of fast cash by a stranger in Changi General Hospital enticed Liyana Mohamed Noor to lie to the police and insurers twice that she had been injured in road accidents.
She claimed to be riding pillion on her boyfriend’s motorbike when it collided with a taxi.
The accident was bogus. So was the boyfriend, court documents obtained by The Sunday Times showed.
Then, she claimed to be a passenger on an SBS Transit bus that had an accident with a motorcycle. She was not on the bus.
Liyana, 22, was eventually found out and sentenced to five months’ jail on April 7 this year.
While she was caught, insurers are concerned that many others get away with making false or inflated injury claims.
Left unchecked, these could lead to higher costs for insurers and higher insurance premiums for motorists.
Their average annual motor premium has risen 30 per cent since 2004 to more than $1,000.
Cases like Liyana’s are not an exception. A week ago, 16 people were charged with making false injury insurance claims of $4,000 to $10,400 each time.
One woman allegedly had $29,553 in all disbursed to her by her insurer for four accidents – in which she was allegedly not present at the scene and did not suffer the injuries she reported.
If convicted of cheating, they could be jailed for up to 10 years and fined.
A tip-off from an insurance company last year led to their arrest, the biggest in recent memory. Insurers allegedly deceived include NTUC Income, India International Insurance, American Home Assurance Company and AIG Insurance.
The General Insurance Association told The Sunday Times that the rise in bodily injury claims in recent years is a worrying trend. They increased from 8,704 in 2007 to 16,174 in 2008 and 17,868 last year. It is working with various parties to share information on fraudulent cases and build strong evidence so that fraudsters can be brought to justice.
The parties include the Monetary Authority of Singapore which regulates the insurance industry, Traffic Police, Subordinate Courts and Singapore Medical Association. Doctors write the medical reports necessary for people to make injury claims.
While GIA declined to discuss the modus operandi of claimants, industry players suspect a change in accident reporting procedures in 1999 may have contributed to the problem.
Motorists are no longer required to make a police report if no one is injured or if they received outpatient medical leave of fewer than three days. There are exceptions, such as accidents involving a pedestrian or a cyclist.
The Traffic Police will not investigate these cases, thus speeding up the processing of claims.
But a motor insurance taskforce formed by the Consumers Association of Singapore and Automobile Association of Singapore pointed out in March this year the possibility of people putting up dishonest accident reports to their insurers now that they did not have to lodge a report with the police.
It was also a change for motorists who used to avoid lodging a police report for fear of being fined or earning demerit points on their driving licence. They would settle matters privately without the involvement of lawyers and insurers.
Now, they had fewer qualms about making a claim, and possibly inflating them.
Egging them on are touts who turn up mysteriously at accident scenes in a scooter or motorbike, offering to help the motorist arrange for his vehicle to be towed to the workshop and submit his claims, industry players said.
Or a motorist may get a call from a stranger offering such services, a few hours after his accident.
In these cases, the touts encourage the motorist to see a doctor even though the latter might not think of doing so, promising they would help him claim for medical expenses.
Then there are touts like the stranger who allegedly approached Liyana when she was warded in CGH for a minor injury during a motorcycle riding lesson.
Court documents revealed that the man had allegedly been hunting for potential clients in traffic accidents to introduce them to law firms to make personal injury claims.
Most of the 16 suspects in the latest court case were said to have worked with a Mr Ong Ai Peng to allegedly make claims. The police are looking for him to help with investigations.
The touts may also identify doctors who are more sympathetic to the complaints of pain by the motorist.
Industry players said they keep seeing the names of certain specialists in claims that they take issue with.
It is also hard to diagnose some injuries such as the least serious Grade 1 whiplash. People complain of pain, stiffness or tenderness in the neck but no physical signs are observed.
The motor insurance taskforce said this grade of whiplash injury was “difficult to diagnose and yet easy to be faked due to its subjective symptomatic nature”.
Industry players said they have seen claims submitted for $5,000 for neck strain based on a medicalreport that merely said the person had complained of neck ache.
There was also a case of a woman in a car accident whose doctor indicated in a medical report that she was fine. But two weeks later, the same doctor wrote a second report saying she had complained of soreness in her arms.
Based on the second report, a claim of more than $3,000 was made.
While the insurer’s lawyers may contest the amount, it is usually hard to prove that the person had no injury at all and should not be compensated, industry players said.
Most insurers settle for a smaller claim, particularly if it is not in the tens of thousands, rather than pay for a lawyer to challenge it in court or a private eye to conduct checks.
It could also be several months before a claim comes in, so even if the insurer’s lawyers call for another medical examination, their doctor will not have the benefit of doing a physical check early on when the accident happened.
The Singapore Medical Council told The Sunday Times it has not received complaints of doctors implicated in false injury insurance claims.
It said doctors are expected to adhere to its ethical code and guidelines. It added: “This would extend to the doctor’s assessment of a patient whether or not it is for the purpose of an insurance claim.”
The Law Society also said it has not received any complaints of lawyers being implicated in false injury motor insurance claims.
But it issued a code of practice on Dec 1 last year on non-injury and personal injury motor accident matters.
The code requires a lawyer to advise his client of the legal consequences of misleading the court and get the person who referred the case to take corrective action.
If the client or the person who made the referral refuses to take the advice, the code requires the lawyer to immediately terminate the agreement and cease to act on the matter.
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