I’m fed up with paying increasingly higher auto insurance premiums year after year, how about you? I’ve talked with my agents in the past and their reasoning in part was due to more people pulling off scams, getting away with receiving payouts after filing false reports.

Ok, I figured that was a pretty good explanation but then wondered how thorough the insurance investigators really were. Did they really do their job in getting to the bottom of things or did they just go out, see the vehicle, take statements that seemed plausible, and cut a check.

As you soon will read, the timing was right for me to initiate action. I decided to investigate, see how far I could pull off a hoax before being caught.

If I received a payout, I’d return it along with a copy of this article to the claims adjuster. If I got busted, I’d tell the adjuster right then what was going on and congratulate them for work well done.

The following is what I discovered to be extremely reassuring regarding how deep an investigation can go with one insurance company in particular, AIG.

On With The Hoax

A husband and wife have a car in Florida that is titled in the following manner, John Smith or Jane Smith, so that either of them can do what they want with the vehicle without the need of written authorization of the other, instead of the standard title of John & Jane Smith.

Then, John Smith takes out an auto insurance policy naming himself as the primary driver, and naming Jane Smith as a secondary driver, instead of structuring the policy as was on the title of their car, John or Jane. Also, they omitted listing their only son as an authorized driver of the car.

John Smith passes away, and since the title of the car was in either name, the policy was never changed to reflect that. Premiums were regularly paid but Jane Smith was never named as primary driver, which was a violation of the rules of the policy, I think.

Jane Smith, after she no longer was able to drive, gifted the car to her son but neglected to inform the insurance company that he was an authorized driver.

Both mother and son agreed that as soon as the mother didn’t need the car any more, he would drive it to the State that he lived in and register it there.

He also had power of attorney from his mom, representing her in all aspects of her life so, to handle all the bills, he put in a change of address at the post office and contacted some of the companies she was doing business with.

The insurance company misinterpreted the address change to mean change of residence, sending up a red flag that something wasn’t right with the coverage.

Because he had power of attorney, having permission to act for his mom, it never crossed his mind to list himself as a driver on her insurance policy. Big mistake.

His mom passes away and son needs to drive the car cross country. The vehicle didn’t have comp or collision at that time so the son added that to the policy just a few days prior to the March cross country trip in case something might happen, still not thinking to add his name to the policy. The policy coverage change was another red flag to the insurance company.

He gets to his home State with no problems, parks the car, and the next morning he discovered the car was backed in to, damaging the front bumper, and was keyed across both sides of the vehicle. Someone tried to break in but couldn’t.

He calls the insurance company, makes the claim, and when asked who he was, he told them Mr Smith’s son. After a few days, he gets a call from the local claims adjuster stating that the claim couldn’t be acted upon without first speaking with John Smith, the named driver on the policy.

When the son asked why, he was told that since he wasn’t listed as a driver on the vehicle, the insurance company needed to get verbal authorization from Mr Smith allowing him to operate the car.

This is where the insurance company begins to dig for the truth, searching for all information that will or will not allow the son to receive a claim payment for the damages done to the car.

The claim is not fraudulent but asking for payment when the policy isn’t correctly in force…is. But I digress.

Since both parents have passed away, the son makes up a story that they are traveling with his uncle in his uncle’s SUV and don’t want to be contacted which is why the son has power of attorney to take care of everything.

Then the son even goes as far as disguising his voice, phoning up the insurance investigator, leaving a message pretending to be Mr Smith, saying that his son had permission to drive the car. Communications go back and forth for a few weeks until an investigator comes to the son’s home.

The son sticks to his story of not being able to contact his parents till they contact him first, then, the investigator tells him that they know that both parents are deceased and that by him giving false information to the insurance company, the claim is fraudulent.

Also, by not complying with the various past notifications needed to keep the policy in force, technically, the policy was most likely void. Busted!!!

Yes, this all happened to me. Yes, I decided to do an investigative report, try to pull off the hoax as soon as I was told that the insurance company needed to talk to my father, since he was the primary driver on the policy. Yes, the time was right to see how far an insurance company would go in an investigation.

I congratulated the investigator on the spot, explaining it all, and asked if I could get a copy of the recording we made at their bequest so I could use some quotes from it. It was agreed, but I was refused when asked to use the name of the company and the name of the investigator until the investigator checked in with various supervisors.

I have since learned that since this expose in no way defames, slanders, or libels AIG Insurance Company or Jennifer Parys, their investigator, I can include them in this article.

All in all, I learned that one auto insurance company will go the distance when it comes to protecting the integrity of their company when it comes to justly cutting claims checks. I wonder how many others go to this extreme in discovering the truths about their policy holders.

Note: This is just part one of my article. Part two should be ready for the June issue. That part questions if at any time, the policy was invalid due to not reporting the passing of my father in ’03, the title transfer to me in ’06, and my mom’s passing in ’07.

If the policy became invalid during any of those times, then the matter of refunding the premiums paid for the policy is in question. 

One quick question to anyone in the know out there…if you think that the policy remained in effect through all this, even though the way the incident was filed was based on false information, not the damage to the vehicle, which was real, I’d like to hear from you. Email steppin@citystar.com