The New York City Police Department is investigating a disturbingly staged crash on the Belt Parkway that went viral on TikTok. Experts say such insurance fraud is on the rise in New York because fraudsters are “getting away with it.”
A police spokesperson said Tuesday that detectives interviewed the victim, Ashpia Natasha, about the incident, which was captured on her dashcam on Oct. 16. In the crash, another driver reversed into the front bumper of a driver on the busy Queens Expressway, causing several passengers to spill out of the car and try to claim they were the ones in the crash. Hurt.
“The investigation by the New York City Police Department’s Criminal Enterprise Investigation Unit’s Unauthorized Collision Investigation Unit is ongoing,” a department spokesperson said in a brief statement.
Unfortunately, incidents like Natasha’s are becoming increasingly common as brazen scammers seek out scams to prey on unsuspecting victims. It even includes classic plot twists like cutting someone off, slamming on the brakes, and then stealing their insurance money.
“This is an ongoing trend and scammers are trying to get away with it,” Mark Friedlander, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, a nonprofit trade group, told the Post on Tuesday. Ta.
“They can profit from these schemes, and they will not slow down until they are arrested and put in jail.”
Friedlander said staged accidents like the one on the Belt Parkway cost insurance companies about $20 billion each year and raise premiums for other insurance companies.
They are most common in areas with heavy traffic congestion, such as California, which had 5,366 staged crashes in 2023, and New York, which ranked second with 1,729 such “accidents” last year. .
That number is particularly increasing in the New York metropolitan area, with the Empire State increasing by 14% from 2022 to 2023 and New Jersey going from 158 people in 2022 to 250 people in 2023, Friedlander said. It has increased by 58%.
Friedlander said that often two cars are involved, one in front of the victim and one behind, with an unsuspecting mark wedged between them.
The conspirators would then mobilize medical professionals willing to further aggravate the severity of the “injuries,” while lawyers would sue the victim’s driver on their behalf.
“It’s not just people causing fraudulent accidents,” Friedlander said. “This is a much broader issue than just a few people in a car causing this problem. It’s really amazing.”
And innocent victims were also left unattended, with Natasha’s case being “a perfect example of an attempted insurance fraud scheme that was unfolding in real time,” according to a National Insurance Crime Bureau official.
The Belt Parkway seems to be a magnet for these scammers — a video posted on Reddit two days ago shows that another eerily similar incident happened on the same road recently at an unknown time. .
In the clip, another silver Honda swerves next to a person driving in the right lane, cuts in, and predictably slams on the brakes.
The victim bumped into the crooks, who got out of the car and slowly walked around holding his neck.
It is not clear how the incident ended or whether police believe the two accidents were committed by the same crew.
The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
But there are ways drivers can protect themselves from becoming the next victim. That includes being a defensive driver (which may not be possible in New York) and installing a dashcam like the one Natasha used to catch would-be scammers.
According to a video she later posted on TikTok, she was driving on a three-lane parkway Wednesday morning when a driver in a silver Honda Accord suddenly changed lanes and cut into her path. He said he stepped on the brake.
She also hit the brakes and narrowly avoided a collision.
At that moment, the other driver stopped in a lane with no shoulder, hit a hazard, and backed into her.
Afterwards, four people got out of the Honda and pretended to be injured as they inspected the damage. A red Kia pulled up and drove off with the suspect inside.
However, the shady crew fell victim to a bit of street justice. According to a video posted on Reddit Wednesday morning, angry Brooklyn vigilantes caught up with the police before they could and took their frustrations out on Honda.
The vandals wrote “Fraud” on a piece of cardboard, stuck it in the windshield and shattered the driver’s side window, according to the video.
They also wrote “rat” on another piece of cardboard and pasted it on the back windshield. This is clear evidence that the Bensonhurst area is wise to their plot.
Tom Burke, a former New York City police detective who specializes in motor vehicle crimes, said this meant he was the mastermind.
“He’s a top guy — a guy who recruited other fools to become victims of his own fraud,” said John Jay, an adjunct professor at Manhattan’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice and director of the New Justice Institute. Mr. Burke said. York Auto Theft Prevention Association.
“That’s why he leaves the scene,” he continued. “He’s the main character, the one making the money. The others are just idiots. You can’t make something like this up.”
If it weren’t for the dashcam recordings, what happened next might have played out exactly as Friedlander predicted.
“Those guys are going to go through the process,” Burke said of the passengers.
“They might be paid hundreds of dollars…and if they all claim they’ve been physically injured, they’ll go to some quack doctor who recommends things like physical therapy and then bill the insurance company for that money.” I’m going to do it.”
Burke added that the technique, which the National Insurance Crime Bureau calls “raid and squat”, tends to be more prevalent in former Eastern Bloc countries.
But an American scammer got his hands on it.
“Things come and go,” Burke said. “And people copy effective scams all the time.”
“And they’ll keep doing that until they’re locked up, and then they’ll do something else,” he continued.
“This kind of thing has been done for many years.”
