Staged vehicle accidents are the most significant insurance fraud issue in South Carolina, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB).
South Carolina ranks 13th in the United States for questionable vehicle-related insurance claims. This places the state significantly higher than others with similar populations, like Alabama, Kentucky, and Louisiana.
“Staged vehicle accidents are one of the most significant fraud issues facing South Carolina,” said Eric De Campos, director of strategy, policy, and government affairs for the NICB. “The impact on residents includes both a financial cost and a safety risk. Residents are not only faced with the costs of the damage done to their vehicles, but also risk serious injury and possible death as a result of vehicle accidents deliberately caused by fraudsters.”
Scammers employ various tactics to carry out staged-accident fraud, as reported by the NICB. These methods include submitting fraudulent information, such as inflated medical bills after a staged accident, in an attempt to influence settlements from insurers during mediation. Fraud rings, involving accomplices like passengers in a staged accident, might also visit multiple health clinics. These individuals receive treatments for supposed soft-tissue injuries that are hard to verify through medical imaging.
In essence, these fraudulent injuries and the subsequent medical services are used to inflate the insurance claim, the NICB stated.
The NICB conducted a city-by-city analysis of questionable vehicle-related claims in South Carolina from 2020 to 2022. The analysis found that Columbia had the highest number of claims, accounting for 13% of the total. Columbia was followed by Greenville (5%) and Florence (4%). A county-by-county analysis found that Richland County exceeded other counties for the number of claims, with almost 15% of the total. Richland was followed by Charleston County and Greenville County, each representing 7% of the total.
“To combat this fraud, it’s imperative to provide the South Carolina Insurance Fraud Division and the state Department of Insurance with the critical resources needed to more effectively deter fraudsters,” De Campos said. “This includes possibly raising minimum criminal penalties for insurance fraud.”
Earlier this year, the organization sounded the alarm regarding contractor fraud in the wake of natural disasters.
