Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Tuesday that 16 people have been arrested in a statewide crackdown on staged car crashes and auto insurance fraud. The arrests followed a months-long joint investigation by the New York State Police and the state Department of Financial Services, reported Insurance Business.
The 16 suspects allegedly tried to claim nearly 500,000 dollars from insurers through more than a dozen separate schemes. They face 31 criminal counts in total, 29 of them felonies and two misdemeanors, according to the governor’s office.
Seven of the suspects were arrested in the Bronx. The rest are spread across Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Suffolk County and Long Island, and Erie, Monroe and Onondaga counties upstate.
Investigators described a range of schemes. In one case at a Brooklyn intersection last December, a driver blamed the other motorist for ignoring a stop sign and submitted more than 16,000 dollars in medical bills, but camera footage showed his own car steering into the other vehicle. He is now charged with insurance fraud, staging a motor vehicle accident, falsifying business records and criminal mischief.
In the Bronx, two people allegedly staged a collision in March and then sought treatment for claimed injuries, running up more than 70,000 dollars in fraudulent medical bills. Each faces counts including second-degree insurance fraud and attempted grand larceny.
Other cases include a deliberate sideswipe of a tractor-trailer on the Cross Bronx Expressway and a 25-year-old Queens man who allegedly blamed an Amazon delivery truck for his injuries to draw more than 18,000 dollars in no-fault payments.
One case had nothing to do with a crash. Tazeona Silas, 23, of Rochester is accused of filing a claim on another person’s policy as though it were her own and is also charged with identity theft. Shawn Baranyi faces one count of fifth-degree insurance fraud for allegedly misrepresenting facts on a claim. None of the 16 has been convicted, and all are presumed innocent.
The sweep is the first major enforcement push under the state’s auto insurance overhaul, which passed earlier this year and lets prosecutors charge recruiters and coordinators who organize staged crashes without ever getting behind the wheel. Officials say carriers flagged 43,811 possible motor vehicle fraud cases to the Department of Financial Services last year, roughly 80 percent more than five years earlier.
State Police Superintendent Steven G. James said pairing troopers with financial fraud examiners was helping the state build stronger cases. Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said there was nothing accidental about insurance fraud.
The state says more cases are in the pipeline. Drivers can report suspected insurance fraud to the state Insurance Fraud Hotline at 888-372-8369.
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