Virginia Insurance Fraud Arrests Going Up

The Virginia State Police Insurance Fraud Program (IFP) continues to make inroads in the fight against the crime of insurance fraud as indicated by the statistics in the just released 2012 Annual Report.

In 2012, the IFP received 1,976 notifications of suspected insurance fraud. Insurance fraud special agents opened 459 cases, which is almost twice the number opened in 2011. They made 383 arrests for insurance fraud and other related offenses – a 66 percent increase over 2011.

Court-ordered restitution was more than $3 million in 2012, the second highest amount of restitution ordered by the courts since 2001. This brings the total of ordered restitution since the program began in 1999 to almost $18 million. Suspected false insurance claims reported to the IFP, both attempted and collected, topped $147 million.

Over the 14 years the program has been operating, more than 19,000 referrals have been made to the VSP, 4,574 fraud investigations have been initiated, and agents have made a total of 2,468 arrests for insurance fraud and related crimes such as arson and forgery and uttering.

As required by Virginia law, the VSP investigates suspected fraud in property and casualty lines of insurance, as well as suspected workers’ compensation fraud. The 2012 statistics show 1,133 property fraud-related notifications were received by the IFP. Notifications involving injury and casualty fraud totaled 530. Of the 530 notifications received for injury and casualty fraud, 144 or 36 percent were for worker’s compensation claims.

Source: Virginia State Police