Manitoba Public Insurance’s team of investigators saved rate-payers millions of dollars again this year by curbing fraudulent automotive claims.
The public insurer has released its list of the top five frauds, which are just a few of the roughly 3,000 claims investigated annually.
Topping the list was a fatal accident involving a moving train, in which the driver claimed he wasn’t actually driving. A Winnipeg man was severely injured and his passenger killed when his vehicle collided with a train. The man had blood alcohol levels double the legal limit and told MPI his deceased passenger was driving.
Video evidence from the locomotive camera found the man to clearly be behind the wheel at the time of the crash. As a result, his personal injury protection plan benefits were denied, saving rate-payers about $150,000.
Other top frauds included two men who crashed their own vehicles with each other in an attempt to write them off, a Winkler man flooding-out his own truck with a hose after claiming it was stolen, a Kenora man who didn’t change his insurance after moving out of Manitoba and then making an accident claim with MPI, and Project Rollout, which saw dozens of vehicles having their odometers rolled back to increase their resale value.
