4 ways you can get busted for "automobile insurance fraud"

Auto insurance fraud is when you knowingly file a false claim with regard to a car or auto insurance policy to recover money that you're not entitled to. Now, we typically see these sorts of cases prosecuted in four types of scenarios. The first is when you stage an accident or the theft

of your car or set your own car on fire in order to collect the insurance money. And this is often done when people are upside down in their payments and they just want to get rid of their car and collect the insurance proceeds. Secondly, we see these cases filed

when there's a false claim of property stolen from the car. So maybe your car really was stolen, but you claim to your insurance company that oh, by the way, I had $5,000 worth of jewelry in the trunk, when really that's not true. The third situation where we see these cases prosecuted

is when there's an inflated claim for damages. So maybe you did have an accident and there was about $1,000 in damages. But you conspire with your mechanic in the auto body shop to claim that there was real $10,000 worth of damages. Finally, we often see these cases prosecuted

when a person uses the wrong address in obtaining an auto insurance policy. So for example, maybe you really live in Los Angeles, but you obtain a car insurance policy claiming that you live in San Bernardino because the premiums are much less using that zip code.

If there's evidence of any of these activities, it could lead to charges of auto insurance fraud.