FIGHTING CRIME AND FRAUD IN THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY

Risk SA

South African Insurance Crime Bureau (SAICB) chief operating officer Hugo van Zyl tells RISKSA that the SAICB’s focus for the year ahead is to address the trends that developed in 2014.

These include:

Vehicle Cloning 

“This has become a huge ‘industry’ in the criminal world; it is rife in the US and is growing at an alarming rate here in South Africa,” says van Zyl. Thieves steal cars, then obtain the record of a similar non stolen vehicle (make, model and colour), and copy the VIN number of the legitimate vehicle to create counterfeit documents, replacing the stolen vehicle’s VIN tag with the counterfeit one. They then register the stolen car with the false detail through fraudulent means and present it as a legitimate vehicle. A cloned vehicle is worth about six times the amount of an average stolen vehicle, explains van Zyl. The SAICB currently has various initiatives in place to combat this growing problem, including automatic number plate recognition.

Cross Border Crime 

“Every year, thousands of stolen and hijacked vehicles are taken over South Africa’s border, costing the insurance industry a fortune. We plan to collaborate with the SAPS to address this issue through successful convictions as well as using the bait car procedure,” notes van Zyl.

Commercial Theft 

Trucks are stolen and later recovered without their cargo. Van Zyl says that the plan to combat this is to collaborate with the SAPS and industry bodies to create a targeted approach to identify the criminals involved.

Motor Fraud

The SAICB will continue to investigate accident staging, paper vehicles, dishonest service providers and illegally imported vehicles. “We aim to curb all these forms of fraudulent activities by using intelligence, information sharing and the bait car procedure in collaboration with the SAPS and other stakeholders like the tracking and microdotting companies.

Non Motor Related Crimes 

Addressing organised crime in jewellery claims (including the Rolex gang), dishonest service providers, airport followings, organised crime groups involved in violent house robberies and fraud in fast track claims is also a key focus of the SAICB. Two investigations currently underway are Android and Ghost. Android concerns the deliberate blacklisting of cell phones in order to submit a claim to an insurance company. After the claim is settled, the ‘blacklisted’ phone is re-instated. The Ghost investigation focuses on the ID documents of deceased persons. In this scam, suspects obtain ID documents from deceased persons as well as unsuspecting persons in order to take out short-term insurance under their names.

Training

We aim to set up key training programmes to address all the above issues. People who will be trained include the staff of SAICB members, the broker fraternity, and governmental institutions such as the SAPS, SANDF, Department of Transport, Road Accident Fund and other government bodies. We are also in the process of liaising with neighbouring countries like Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana in an effort to build relationships and train their staff to identify stolen vehicles to curb vehicle crime and to sign service level agreements to ascertain recovery and repatriation of vehicles from neighbouring and or SADC countries.