A 37-year-old man who made a fraudulent claim for £34,000 worth of items on his home insurance has been given a suspended jail sentence following an investigation by the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED), part of the City of London Police.
Kaustubh Ghosh pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation and possession of articles for use in fraud for which he was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment and six months imprisonment respectively with both sentences suspended for two years to run concurrently. Ghosh was also ordered to complete 160 hours of unpaid work and to pay £1,000 in costs.
On 12 May 2014, Ghosh contacted his home insurer, LV=, to inform them that his home had been burgled whilst he had been away on a holiday in Ibiza.
On the claim, Ghosh stated that he had lost items totalling £60,000 including camera and sports equipment, jewellery, clothing, DVDs and electrical equipment.
Suspicious that the claim might be fraudulent, LV= fraud investigators looked into the case and noticed that Ghosh had made a similar claim with another insurer for household contents that were stolen the previous year, where he had received a payout of £34,000. Ghosh provided LV= with various invoices for items he claimed were stolen in the burglary, but when they compared the invoices to those from the previous claim, many of the invoices were the same – with the duplicates totalling £34,000 worth of items.
When asked by LV= why the some of the invoices had been submitted for both claims, Ghosh decided to withdraw the claim. However, the case was passed to detectives from the IFED, who opened a criminal investigation into Ghosh. Through further enquiries, officers also established that eight of the 11 invoices Ghosh submitted had been fraudulently made up by him.
Ghosh was arrested by IFED officers in November 2014 and was charged with the above offences on 30 June 2015.
Police Staff Investigator Tony Freeman from the IFED, who investigated the case said: “Ghosh went to significant lengths to try and defraud his insurer into paying out for goods and items he had already claimed for in a previous burglary, and had simply forged invoices to increase his claim.
“Insurance claims are checked and where we find evidence that somebody is making a fraudulent claim, we’ll look to prosecute them and put them before the courts.”
Clare Lunn, Head of Claims Crime Prevention at LV= said: “LV= takes a hard line on fraud, investigates all suspicious claims and works closely with IFED to pursue dishonest claims to make sure fraudsters are brought to justice. This is a great result and sends a strong message to all fraudsters that fraud is a crime with serious consequences.”