Five accidents involving 31 suspected fraudulent claims and 15 claimants, including several semi-professional Welsh footballers, have been revealed as part of a suspected large-scale criminal conspiracy to defraud RSA. The 15 claimants, all from South Wales, have had their claims struck out and are now liable to meet RSA’s costs, which have been assessed in excess of £100,000.
At the centre of the claims was the same accident management company in Cardiff, with many of those presenting the suspected claims being represented by the same solicitors, even though those solicitors were based in Cheshire. The same engineers also inspected the vehicles, said to have been driven by the at fault motorists.
Over a number of months, intelligence was gathered by RSA and law firm DWF against 15 claimants who had issued proceedings against RSA, claiming damages for personal injury and other losses. As a result of those enquiries and after RSA had filed a defence alleging fraud and conspiracy against all 15, all of those claims were struck out by His Honour Judge Seys Llewellyn QC.
The streets of Cardiff acted as the backdrop to a number of suspected staged accidents, which took place over 9 days in September 2013, within a 4 mile radius of each other. The claimants were all linked by social media connections and, in some instances, played semi-professionally for the same South Wales football teams.
Commenting on the successful operation, John Beadle of RSA said:
“This is an extremely satisfying outcome, particularly given that, with costs, the total value of these claims was around £600,000 and comes after months of painstaking work by the intelligence teams at RSA and DWF. The Judge took a very firm line against fraud in striking out the claims, then making all the claimants liable for our costs, which our lawyers are now pursuing”.
Nigel Hughes of DWF, who defended the claim, said:
“This was a long and complex investigation and the intelligence that was gathered meant that, had the case proceeded to trial, we were confident that the Court would have made a finding of fraud and concluded that all the claimants were acting as part of a large scale criminal conspiracy to commit the fraud.”