Online insurance fraud isn’t unique to Canada – take the U.K. man who duped first-time drivers into buying fake car insurance with the aid of an office noise soundtrack playing in the background.
Britain’s Danyal Buckharee swindled $69,501 from oblivious customers within the first three weeks of setting up the First Direct website, between May 2011 and April of last year.
The arrest of Serafattin (George) Solak in Canada on several counts of fraud, accused of selling phony auto insurance policies, made headlines last week (see Aviva works with police to catch scam artist).
So-called Ghost Brokers – people who sell fake policies to unsuspecting customers – are becoming a growing problem that is sweeping the U.K.
In the case of Buckharee, customers were led to believe that when they called the phony brokerage, they were being put through to a genuine insurance call centre. Instead, the City of London Police’s insurance fraud department traced the operation to a South London flat and found an iPod with soundtrack called ‘Office Noise’ connected to loudspeakers to give the impression of a busy call centre.
Buckharee has pleaded guilty to operating the scam which involved four websites, according to the London Daily Mail. (continued.)
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He launched First Direct after realizing the other three he had set up were under investigation by police.
Prosecutor Ann Mulligan described the defendant’s fake call centre as a “fraud factory” littered with printers, faxes, telephones, bank cards, chequebooks, cellphones and paper shredders.
It is alleged that Buckharee did not work alone.
Andrew Goward, 38, Gary Heaven, 37, and Mohamed Saleh, 26, are alleged to have been recruited to open bank accounts to receive the money paid in by the victims. Another, Giovanni Recchia, was drafted in to run one of the websites from an apartment.
In his guilty plea, Buckharee admitted two counts of fraud by false representation and three counts of money laundering. Recchia denies one count of fraud by false representation. Heaven, Goward and Saleh, all deny money laundering.
