A Liverpool man has been convicted of fraud by false representation after fraudulently claiming more than £31,000 from multiple insurers by repeatedly reporting dogs as dead, following an investigation by the City of London Police's Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.
Robert Daniel Cretu was found guilty in connection with 30 separate fraudulent pet insurance claims.
He repeatedly took out pet insurance policies before submitting fabricated claims alleging the insured dogs had died, using almost identical circumstances in more than 30 cases - a dog startled on a walk, slipping its lead, running into the road and being fatally struck by a vehicle.
In other claims he alleged a dog had chased a seagull off a pier, fallen into the sea and later washed up on a beach. Investigators found a range of falsified documents supporting the claims, including fake veterinary records, altered pet medical histories, cremation paperwork and fabricated bank statements.
The insurers affected included Allianz, Markerstudy Retail, Admiral and Pinnacle.
Cretu pleaded guilty to five charges relating to the 30 fraudulent claims and was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court to 20 months' imprisonment, suspended for 18 months. The court heard that while he successfully obtained more than £31,000, the total value of attempted fraud was significantly higher, suggesting a number of claims were identified and blocked before payment.
Detective Chief Inspector Nik Jethwa of IFED said Cretu took advantage of multiple insurers for financial gain at a time that is often distressing for people who have lost a pet, and that he had ultimately paid the price for exploiting the system.
Jon Radford, head of intelligence, investigations and data services at the Insurance Fraud Bureau, said Cretu had cynically used records from his own living pet to create fictional dogs and submit bogus death claims, adding that insurance fraud drives up costs for honest customers and undermines a system people depend on for support.
Each individual claim in this case likely resembled a plausible, if tragic, pet death, which is precisely why the pattern only became visible once insurers began comparing notes.
Animal Friends Insurance, acting as lead insurer, worked with the Insurance Fraud Bureau, IFED and fellow insurers to identify connections between claims that on their own would have looked like isolated incidents. Kat Perry, counter fraud manager at Animal Friends, said what initially appeared to be individual claims formed part of a much wider pattern of activity, and that sharing intelligence and working closely with industry partners allowed insurers to support an investigation that led to this outcome.
Similar statements came from each of the other insurers affected. Tabatha Ingleson, fraud risk and claims manager at Markerstudy, called the outcome a fantastic result highlighting the importance of cross-industry collaboration in tackling fraud.
Lorraine Nash, strategic relationship manager overseeing counter fraud at Admiral Pet Insurance, said Admiral worked closely with industry partners, the Insurance Fraud Bureau and law enforcement throughout the investigation to help identify and evidence the fraudulent activity.
Meanwhile, Matt Crabtree, head of financial crime intelligence and investigations at Allianz UK, said the outcome sends a clear message that insurers will take action against fraud, crediting the Insurance Fraud Bureau's Pet Insurance Working Group for supporting the investigation.
This case fits a wider pattern IFED has documented since its 2012 founding, having secured more than 400 convictions in its first seven years alone.
The Association of British Insurers found UK insurers detected £1.16 billion in fraudulent general insurance claims in 2024, a 2% rise on the previous year, with industry estimates suggesting the true annual cost of insurance fraud, including undetected cases, exceeds £3 billion, adding an estimated £50 to every policyholder's annual premium.
Pet insurance fraud specifically has featured in several recent IFED cases, including a veterinary nurse sentenced in 2024 for using her employer's claims system to submit fraudulent claims on her own pets' policies, and a finance officer sentenced the same year for altering veterinary invoices to support fabricated claims.
What distinguishes this case from a single opportunistic false claim is the deliberate repetition: 30 near-identical fabricated deaths across multiple insurers is not a moment of dishonesty but a sustained operating pattern, one that depended on no single insurer having visibility into what the others were seeing.
That the pattern was only uncovered through cross-insurer intelligence sharing, rather than any one company's own fraud detection, is the clearest practical lesson from this case for the pet insurance sector: individually plausible claims can still add up to an organised pattern that only becomes visible at an industry level, reinforcing why bodies like the Insurance Fraud Bureau's Pet Insurance Working Group exist in the first place.
