Insurance: Jail in crash for cash case

PHANG Choon Meng, a 38 year old former accident claim adviser knew the ropes. Force an accident so minor no one really got hurt but so the car in which his team were travelling had enough damage to make personal injury claims look convincing.

Hard braking in front of a lorry causing an inevitable rear-end shunt was a favourite trick.

Last December he pleaded guilty to 8 charges of defrauding insurance companies and led to in industry-wide re-assessment of accident claims (see story ). He also asked for a further nine cases to be taken into account (meaning they are marked as solved in police files but no prosecution is made in respect of those cases and, because he assists in improving the clear up rate, he receives a small credit on sentencing).

Amongst his scams were claiming that cars had more passengers than they in fact had, that injuries were much more serious than they were.

One Singpaore insurance company, NTUC Income, has successfully sued more than two dozen fraud cases for wrongful claims.

But it is the increase in criminal cases that is starting to attract attention: PHANG's team is already short seven people, previously jailed for up to six months for taking part in the fraud.