A 28-year-old man has been jailed for more than three years after he attempted to defraud two insurance companies, claiming £97,824 for lost income for a job he never had due to an illness he falsely claimed to be suffering from.
As a result of the investigation by the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, part of the City of London Police, Mark Downes was sentenced to a total of three years and four months’ imprisonment on Tuesday, 5 January at the Old Bailey having previously pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud by false representation and eight counts of possessing articles for use in fraud. He received three years in relation to the articles for use in fraud offences and two years for the fraud by false representation offences to be served concurrently and an additional four months after a suspended sentence was triggered in relation to a previous fraud offence to be served consecutively.
Between January 2012 and April 2013 Downes opened four income protection insurance policies; two with Cardif Pinnacle and two with Shepherds Friendly, although both the Shepherds Friendly policies were closed shortly after they were opened due to non-payment of direct debits.
When he opened the different policies, Downes claimed that he was employed by haulage company ‘Kaatee Transport’, stating he was a driver on some of the policy application forms and a manager on others.
On 28 March 2012, Downes then made claims against both Cardif Pinnacle policies stating that he had been unable to work since 25 January 2012 due to having the medical condition ‘ulcerative colitis’. One of the claims was immediately rejected due to the illness pre-dating the start date of the policy.
The other claim was progressed, but suspicious that it was a false claim, Cardif Pinnacle initiated its own investigation and found various inconsistencies in the documentation and claim details provided by Downes. Believing it to be a fraudulent claim, the case was passed on to the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department to investigate.
Detectives discovered that the medical notes and letters had been forged and when they contacted the doctor whom allegedly signed the medical notes, he had no knowledge of them and stated that they had been poorly written, were not of a professional standard and contained many basic errors and mistakes that a doctor would not make.
The addresses on correspondence Downes supplied - supposedly from his doctor’s surgery and from Kaatee Transport - were checked and detectives discovered the addresses were linked to ‘virtual offices’ that Downes had set up himself and had no links to any medical or haulage companies. In some of the letters the same address had been listed for both the haulage company and the doctor’s surgery, before subsequent letters were seemingly corrected to show different addresses.
When officers tracked down the genuine offices for Kaatee Transport in the Netherlands, the company confirmed that Downes had only worked for them as a driver between March 2008 and April 2008 and was no longer employed by them.
Further enquiries also led detectives to discover the cancelled Shepherds Friendly policies Downes had applied for using similar false information in relation to his occupation – albeit the policies were cancelled before any claims could be made against them.
Downes was arrested on 12 July 2013 and charged on 3 March 2014 with the above offences. After failing to appear at the City of London Magistrates’ Court on multiple occasions, a further arrest warrant was issued and he was re-arrested on 15 August 2015 and remanded in custody until his eventual conviction and sentencing.
Detective Constable Jamie Kirk, from the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department said: “Downes opened these four income protection policies with the sole intention of falsely claiming against them for his own profit. Thanks to the vigilance of the staff at Cardif Pinnacle and Shepherds Friendly, we have then been able to establish the full extent of his fraud and deceit. This sentence should serve as a stark warning to others thinking of doing similar that claims are checked and those making false claims will be prosecuted.”