Fraud is something that Don Delaney, a long-time Chicago claim adjuster and first-time author, has plenty of experience dealing with. Recently, he shared with Claims some insights from his often comical personal files.
You once had a 10-foot piece of wood hurled at your car while investigating an accident scene?
That particular experience involved a piece of plywood that was fashioned as a spear or like a javelin, thrown by one of 30-40 young men at a nearby corner. I was lucky that it didn't put my eye out; it went right by my nose. My mind was telling me to get out of there, but my ego was telling me I should stay and try to finish the job. That incident, as well as going to Cabrini-Green/Robert Taylor Homes (two of Chicago's South Side housing projects), was probably the most crazy; it got my blood boiling and my pulse rate way up.
[After the plywood incident, Delaney says he drove several hundred yards away, got out of his car, broke the plywood over his knee, and shouted some choice words at the young man.]
You pride yourself on being able to smell a rat, so to speak. Did that instinct take time to develop?
When I first got into the business and was working for USF&G, they told me to go out to a construction site. Apparently, an air compressor had fallen down an elevator shaft. The impression that I got — and it was a pretty strong impression but I couldn't prove it — was that it had been deliberately pushed by someone who didn't like the guy standing at the bottom of the shaft. That really opened my eyes as to how nasty people can be, made me very cynical right from the beginning. So, having that kind of mindset, you begin to look for things that are out of the ordinary or things that just don't seem logical.
What can insurance carriers do better when investigating fraud?
I think that, with insurance companies and companies that are self-insured doing so much on the telephone, a lot can get lost. Going out to see people, going out to actually eyeball someone on a person-to-person basis, being able to see their body language, being able to hear the inflection in their voices, being able to actually look at various things, a lot of it gets lost over the telephone. It's really tough if you're not out there in the trenches.
More information about Fraud: The Secret Files of America's #1 Investigator is available at www.dhdelaney.com.
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