Attorney General calls for tougher penalties for insurance fraud

Higher penalties and longer jail time proposed to curb insurance rings that victimize motorists

Attorney General calls for tougher penalties for insurance fraud

Insurance News

By Allie Sanchez

The Nevada Attorney General’s office is seeking stiffer penalties for insurance fraudsters who stage fake traffic accidents to collect payouts.

Assembly Bill 15, filed on behalf of Attorney General Adam Laxalt by the Assembly Committee on Commerce and Labor, proposes to hike the jail term for convicted insurance fraudsters from one to four years, to two to 10 years.

“These staged accident rings operate like organized criminal enterprises,” Laxalt’s bureau chief for criminal justice Jeffery Segal, was quoted as saying in a Las Vegas Review Journal report. Segal further told the publication that these rings entrap unwitting motorists into paying with cash or filing false injury claims.

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Furthermore, the bill fielded a proposed increase of fines from the current limit of $5,000 per offense to $10,000 per offense.

However, opponents of the bill were sceptical that the new measures would yield the desired effect and instead proposed investments in the training of police and prosecutors to combat the problem. 


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