The North Carolina Department of Insurance ("DOI") has added 15 new special agents to fight insurance fraud in the state.
The DOI's commissioner, Mike Causey, said in a statement that, "One of the first things I did when I took office was meet with our criminal investigations division. I learned, because of the vast number of insurance fraud complaints in this state, we were shorthanded on the number of investigators to examine them."
Each month, North Carolina receives between 400 to 500 criminal insurance fraud complaints.
In 2017, the commissioner's first year in office, 334 people were arrested for insurance-related violations, almost 60 percent more arrests than the year before. Those arrests resulted in the recovery of approximately $14.1 million, according to the DOI.
Last year, the North Carolina General Assembly appropriated $2.4 million to hire additional agents in the DOI's criminal investigations division, including a crime analyst, forensic accountant, attorneys, and special agents.
The newly hired agents spent a week in the DOI's Special Agent Academy, training in the classroom and out in the field to learn the best methods for investigating insurance fraud.
In 1945, North Carolina became the first state in the nation to set up a criminal investigations division within the DOI.