Tampering with documents never pays off

Drafting or falsifying a document to substantiate a false claim is a dangerous game. Your insurer is likely to find out and there will be consequences to pay. XpertCenter verifies a massive volume of documents every year.

For some people, an insurance claim can spell a chance to make money at the expense of other policyholders. When a spoken untruth needs supporting evidence, purchase receipts, invoices or other documents will sometimes be tampered with or even created from scratch. At times a higher purchase price will be quoted to obtain a more juicy payout, or maybe only the currency will be changed. At other times the date may be altered to secure repayment in the event the risk was not covered beforehand. Another ruse is changing the person’s name from someone who was not insured to someone who was. The inventiveness of dishonest policyholders seems to know no bounds. Checks focusing on tell-tell signs are therefore implemented, verifying that the submitted information both gives the full picture and is rigorously authentic.

Nowadays, manual checks are supplemented by computer-based analysis. One policyholder who reported a burglary was unmasked this way. When the insurer visited the location, the policyholder was asked to present any paperwork proving that she had owned the stolen jewellery and other items and how much they were all worth. She thought that she no longer had these proofs but would look for them anyway. The following day, she submitted several photos found on her phone. The photos were in fact too authentic, proving the exact models and thereby their value too, and that they had indeed been owned by the policyholder. But it was also shown that she still had these items in her possession, as the computer programme indicated that the images were taken a few hours after the insurer’s visit. Her policy was terminated with retroactive effect, she lost all claims for indemnification – even for the items that were actually stolen – and was prosecuted.

She will now have trouble taking out a policy with another insurer. The consequences of insurance fraud are for life, so it’s never worth the risk.