Fraud of the Week
Vehicle fraud – New Jersey
Amount – $2.7 million
The owner of a truck repair shop and eleven others are being charged with racketeering, insurance fraud, and theft by deception. The shop owner allowed various agents and producers to list his shop's address as the garaging address for roughly 170 trucking companies to claim that almost 400 trucks were being garaged on the premises, when the premises can only hold around thirty vehicles. Insurer employees noticed a large number of applications for commercial trucking companies claiming to garage vehicles at the same address. Surveillance substantiated that none of the vehicles in question were parked on the lot.
Insurance premiums are particularly low in that area, and the producers involved would offer the vehicle owner the option of claiming that the vehicles were garaged at the premises in question when quotes for the actual garaging address were costly. The insureds were told they didn't have to actually locate the vehicles there, it was just used for insurance purposes. In reality, these vehicles could be found as far away as North Carolina and New York. While the charges are for $2.7 million in underpaid premiums in 2021, a total of $20 million has been underpaid in premiums since 2018.